Calculating poverty in New York: More by city standard, and less by federal one, By Sam Roberts, March 2, 2010, New York Times: “The number of poor people in New York rose by about 300,000, according to a new measure of poverty by the city that takes into account expenses like housing, medical costs and child care that the federal government does not include in its formulation. The increase in poverty under the city’s calculation from 2005 to 2008 contradicts the official federal poverty rate, which showed a decline in New York for the same period, and defied the efforts of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had made combating poverty a priority of his second term and pioneered the new poverty measurement. City officials said the poverty rate could show a further increase again for 2009 as a result of the recession. Although the recession does not seem to have drained the city of jobs as severely as once feared, about one in five working families failed to earn enough to escape poverty, the city’s analysis found. Many blacks were bumped into lower-paying jobs during the economic slump, and older New Yorkers recorded the highest poverty rates because they were pinched by unreimbursed medical expenses…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty