This is the first in a series of three posts that looks at the measurement and politics of poverty in the United States
As I reported last week, the poverty rate in the United States in 2010 soared. Under the official poverty line there are now more than 46 million individuals living in poverty. In today’s blog post I want to address one right-wing critique that has gained prominence recently. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation and others have made the argument that the poverty line is a misleading indicator of material wellbeing because the majority of people classified as poor actually enjoy a more “middle class” standard of living.
This is a surprising claim, especially because when left-leaning scholars talk about the poverty line in the United States, they typically come to exactly the opposite conclusion: pointing out how inadequate these budgets are for meeting the needs of low-income…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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