How was the poverty line developed?
The poverty thresholds were originally developed in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Orshansky took the dollar costs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture s economy food plan for families of three or more persons and multiplied the costs by a factor of three. She followed somewhat different procedures to calculate thresholds for one- and two-person units in order to allow for the relatively larger fixed costs that small family units face. (The economy food plan used by Orshansky is included in a 1962 Agriculture Department report.) Orshansky used a factor of three because the Agriculture Department s 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey found that for families of three or more persons, the average dollar value of all food used during a week (both at home and away from home) accounted for about one third of their total money income after taxes. In May 1965, the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity adopted Orshansky s poverty thresholds as a working o
