This article by Niels Veldhuis is important because it examines whether the use of “poverty lines” to explain poverty is actually fair...and the implications are astounding. Poverty lines measure inequality not true poverty. A better way to measure it is by determining whether an individual has access to the basic necessities of life — such as food, clothing, shelter, etc. — rather than how much income one has relative to the average in society. Using a truer measurement of poverty may mean that the actual number of Americans or Canadians in true poverty is just a fraction of what we are led to believe from using poverty line measurements.
