Book Forum: The Poverty of “The Poverty Rate”: Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America November 19, 2008

Host: American Enterprise Institute. Since its inception in 1965, America’s federally established official poverty rate 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, political economist Nicholas Eberstadt finds that the OPR is, in reality, “a broken compass”—a flawed index generating increasingly misleading numbers about poverty in the United States.

With the issue of need in America coming into renewed focus, the question of how to measure the performance of our nation’s antipoverty policies is increasingly critical. Joining the author will be two noted experts on U.S. domestic policy—AEI’s Michael Barone, coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics and author of Our Country, and William Galston, a domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. AEI’s Douglas J. Besharov will moderate.

Official Website: http://www.aei.org/events/type.upcoming,eventID.1836,filter.all/event_detail.asp