Besharov's comments follow a briefing on the Census Bureau's "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage" report.

Douglas Besharov is available to comment on thenew poverty report from the Census Bureau.

Since its inception in 1965, America's federally established official poverty rate (OPR) has been the single most important statistic used by policymakers and concerned citizens to evaluate success or failure in the nation's efforts to alleviate poverty. In his newly released examination of this widely quoted measure, The Poverty of...

Conventional wisdom states that the economic well-being of all but the wealthiest Americans has stagnated or declined over the past twenty-five years. In Prices, Poverty, and Inequality: Why Americans Are Better Off Than You Think, Christian Broda and David E. Weinstein argue that this idea is based on misleading measurements...

Today's official poverty rate is hardly lower than the 1968 rate, but a closer look at forty years of poverty data tells a more mixed story.

How does the government measure poverty in America? What are the pros and cons of its methods?