Question

In the United States, the official definition of the poverty line traces back to a single person: ___________________, whose idea was to ___________________________.

Answer 1

Answer: The official poverty line can be traced to Mollie Orshansky.

Explanation:

The official definition of the poverty line in the United States can be traced to an individual named Mollie Orshansky. Orshansky while working for the Social Security Administration, published an article titled “Children of the Poor” in the Social Security Bulletin in 1963. The idea was to define a poverty line that was based on the cost of a healthy diet.

Her former job was at the United States Department of Agriculture where her role was to calculate the cost of feeding a nutritionally adequate diet to a family. She found that one-third of income is spent on food by the average family. She then posited that the poverty line is the amount needed to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet, while taking the size of the family into consideration and multiplied by three.