NY mayor offers new gauge for poverty

from the Boston Globe

Federal formula called outdated and inaccurate

By Dan Sewell

CINCINNATI - Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York is proposing a new way to gauge poverty in the United States.

Bloomberg planned to discuss the city's alternative to the federal poverty measure in a speech last night at the national convention of the NAACP. He said the 1960s-era federal formula for deciding who is living below the poverty line is outdated.

Bloomberg's trip to Cincinnati was canceled because of bad weather, and his office said Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, who earlier gave a briefing on the measure, would deliver his speech for him.

In the prepared speech, Bloomberg said: "If we're serious about fighting poverty, we also have to start getting serious about measuring it."

City officials said under the federal formula, which is $20,444 for a family of four, some 19 percent of New Yorkers are considered poor. Under the new formula, which takes into account New York's high cost of living, the poverty line is at $26,138 and 23 percent of New Yorkers are below it.

New York's new measure factors in more costs than the current formula, which is heavily weighted to grocery spending, Bloomberg said. The city's version counts tax credits and other government benefits while adjusting for geographic differences such as housing costs.

The new formula provides "a more accurate picture of who is poor and what that word means - today - in 2008," Bloomberg said in his prepared text.

New York will offer help to other cities that are interested, he said. Bloomberg, who considered an independent presidential run this year, also urged the presidential candidates to make poverty a priority issue in their campaigns.

Advocates of changing the federal poverty measure, which has been under study for years, say New York's way of measuring would better assess US poverty and the impact of government programs, helping better target resources. How poverty is measured is politically sensitive because it helps determine eligibility for some federal programs.
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