1963 SPECIAL REPORT: "TOMMY…THE DISADVANTAGED KID"

50 years ago during the civil rights movement, the Poor People’s Campaign set out to put poverty reduction front and center on the national agenda. Over six weeks in 1968, a community-led multiethnic movement brought national attention to the plight of poor people in the United States. Today, as preparations begin around the country to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this campaign, we can look back and see what progress has been made and where work still needs to be done. This snapshot is the first in a series that will hopefully help readers understand the challenges surrounding poverty that remain today.

The current official U.S. poverty measure has been used since the 1960s, when it was devised as part of the “War on Poverty.” The official poverty line was originally set at approximately three times a basic food budget, adjusted by family size and composition, and it is updated annually by overall inflation. It is not a perfect measure of poverty. The thresholds are too low (largely because food prices rose more slowly than other prices since its inception) and it doesn’t count some key resources poor families rely on (such as in-kind public benefits like Medicaid or food stamps). In later snapshots, we’ll turn to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), a measure that better reflect both the resources families can access and the true cost of living. Whatever the measure’s shortcomings, it remains the official poverty rate reported by the federal government each year and the one used for determining eligibility for many safety net programs—and families that live below the official poverty line today are clearly facing genuine economic distress.

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