More Americans Living in Poverty

The government is looking at whether to adopt the National Academy of Science's formula to count the number of Americans that are living in poverty; this formula would take into consideration the costs of medical care and other important necessities like transportation, child-care and housing costs. This new formula would show a significant rise in the poverty rate among older Americans as it would increase the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over from 3.6 million Americans to 6.8 million Americans. The new measure would consider everyday costs of necessities besides just food. If this formula is adopted it would eventually lead to changes in how billions of dollars for the poor are spent on health, housing, nutrition and child-care benefits. The overall poverty rate would also increase from 12.5% to 15.3%, this would mean a total of 45.7 million people. The rate for children under 18 living in poverty would decline to 17.9% and the number of single mothers who receive food stamps, would decline in rates of poverty. Large cities with higher costs of living might see higher rates, while rural areas in the Midwest and the South might actually see declines. The rate for "extreme" poverty, that is falling below 50% of the poverty line, would decrease because of housing and other benefits and immigrant poverty rates would increase because of the costs of transportation and low involvement in the government. All of these changes have been discussed for years and both Democrats and Republicans agree that it is necessary to adopt a new measure because the older one is outdated. This formula should be considered to be adopted because all these factors would influence how money gets spent and it would actually benefit many Americans. Americans who don't receive any or little help, would be assisted and it would also be very significant because the government is dealing with an economic crisis right now and the money that is being spent to help the poor should take into regard all of the circumstances that people live under. Just like other issues that are already discussed, it will take a long time to decide whether or not this measure is going to be adopted.