FlyTheNest

If you keep Orshansky’s logic—if you maintain her principle that poverty could be defined by the inverse of food’s budget share—but update the food share to reflect today’s reality, the multiplier is no longer three.

It becomes sixteen.

Which means if you measured income inadequacy today the way Orshansky measured it in 1963, the threshold for a family of four wouldn’t be $31,200.

It would be somewhere between $130,000 and $150,000.

And remember: Orshansky was only trying to define “too little.” She was identifying crisis, not sufficiency. If the crisis threshold—the floor below which families cannot function—is honestly updated to current spending patterns, it lands at $140,000.

What does that tell you about the $31,200 line we still use?

It tells you we are measuring starvation.

gilsey wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 12:09 pm Good morning.
US blog but interesting, no wonder the country's f*****.
I used to think they were ungrateful for Biden's post-pandemic stimulus, but for most it probably didn't touch the sides.

https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-m ... dium=email

"" The family earning $65,000—the family that just lost their subsidies and is paying $32,000 for daycare and $12,000 for healthcare deductibles—is hyper-aware of the family earning $30,000 and getting subsidized food, rent, childcare, and healthcare.

They see the neighbor at the grocery store using an EBT card while they put items back on the shelf. They see the immigrant family receiving emergency housing support while they face eviction.

They are not seeing “poverty.” They are seeing people getting for free the exact things that they are working 60 hours a week to barely afford. And even worse, even if THEY don’t see these things first hand… they are being shown them: ""