Defining Poverty: An Exchange

At the end of 2008, The Big Money published an article by Georgia Levenson Keohane arguing that the federal government's current definition of the poverty line is hopelessly outdated and that a recent policy shift in New York City deploys a much more useful and precise definition. Slate blogger Mickey Kaus took issue with a number of points in the article. Below is his critique, along with a response from the author.

Michael Kinsley used to say that every time journalists use the "from A to Z" form of expression—as in "spans the spectrum from A to Z," or "everyone from X to Y"—it only serves to show how narrow the spectrum being described is, not how broad. There's a good example of this Kinsley iron law in the press-releasey piece The Big Money ran on Mayor Bloomberg's newfangled poverty measure:

For decades, scholars and policymakers across the political spectrum—from Patrick Moynihan to researchers at the American Enterprise Institute—have argued that [the old poverty] measure is broken. [E.A.]

I submit that the distance between Daniel Patrick Moynihan and AEI is something less than vast. It would be more accurate to say that Moynihan is revered at AEI, especially Moynihan's neoconservative tendencies. Chris DeMuth, AEI's president from 1986 until recently, worked for Moynihan. And here's a Charles Krauthammer showpiece AEI lecture that builds on praise for Moynihan.

It's hard to tell if the Big Money's author, Georgia Levenson Keohane, is credulous or simply thinks her audience is. Are you impressed that in developing his new poverty measure, Mayor Bloomberg "met extensively with Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, who in September introduced the Measuring American Poverty Act of 2008 in the U.S. House of Representatives"? Then you are easily impressed.  Keohane doesn't even deal with some of the obvious potential controversies surrounding the new measure (which produced a poverty figure for New York City that is 20% higher), specifically,

a) Should Medicaid and other government health benefits really be counted at full dollar value? They cost what they cost. But you can't eat fancy health insurance—if it might one day pay for a $100,000 heart operation for you or someone else on the plan, that doesn't mean you're not destitute today.