WHO YA' GONNA BELIEVE, TED KENNEDY OR YOUR LYIN' EYES?:

Why Poverty Doesn't Rate (Nicholas Eberstadt, September 3, 2006, Washington Post)

A wealth of evidence shows that those who are counted as poor today have dramatically higher living standards than their counterparts in the 1960s, when the poverty rate was originally devised:

Food and nutrition: In the early 1960s, the poorest fifth of American families were forced to devote nearly 30 percent of their expenditures to buying food; by 2004, the proportion was down to one-sixth of spending. Undernourishment and hunger were common among the most vulnerable elements of society 40 years ago; today, by contrast, obesity is the main nutritional problem facing adult Americans, rich and poor alike. And even children considered poor by official standards are better nourished today than in the 1960s. As recently as 1973, about 8 percent of low-income children surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control were judged underweight; by 2004 the figure had dropped below 5 percent. The prevalence of anemia among poorer American children likewise fell by more than half during those same years.

Housing: In 2001, only about 6 percent of the country's poor households lived in "crowded" dwellings (homes with more than one inhabitant per room), compared with more than 25 percent in 1970, according to the Census Bureau. Today's poor households are more likely to have telephone service and television sets than even non-poor households in 1970; they are much more likely to have central air conditioning than the typical American home of 1980, and almost as likely to have a dishwasher. Moreover, according to a Department of Energy survey in 2001, most poverty households have microwaves, VCRs or DVDs, and cable television -- conveniences unavailable in even the most affluent homes at the time the poverty rate measure was first released.

Autos and motor travel : In 1973, a majority of the households in the bottom fifth of income earners did not own a car. By 2003, nearly three-fourths of all poverty households had a car, truck or van, and a rising fraction owned two or more such vehicles.

Health care: For the affluent and the disadvantaged alike, life expectancy in America has risen significantly since the nation's poverty measures were first developed. The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics has found a broad improvement in national health conditions over the past four decades. Since 1965, for example, the U.S. infant mortality rate (the risk of death in the year after birth) has dropped by more than 70 percent. And regardless of the availability of health insurance, access to medical treatment has risen markedly for poorer Americans: Children in poor families are more likely today to have an annual medical visit or checkup with a doctor than even non-poor children did just 20 years ago.