ABSTRACT
The official poverty measure of the United States federal government is the most commonly used indicator of the material well-being of low-income Americans. In 1969, Mollie Orshansky’s simple formula was adopted by the federal government as the official metric by which to determine poverty status. The well-being of low-income Americans, of course, is the main reason why we are worried about poverty status. Single-parent families are a major cause of poverty and, according to many analysts, also a major consequence of poverty. In any event, even with Obamacare’s unprecedented subsidies, health care costs will continue to rise unless effective counter-measures are adopted, worsening the employment and earnings prospects of most Americans, especially low-income workers. An aging population means higher taxes on young workers to pay for the elderly’s underfunded public and private retirement systems, including Medicare and Medicaid, that threaten sharply higher taxes on all American workers.
