You constantly hear stats such as USA has > 20% poverty etc
turns out many of these stats (dont by UN etc) are measured in relative ways.
For example if you make less than 50% of the median income you are poor.
How does that make sense?
Is that not just income in-equality not poverty?
I think so. That median measure is also prone to paradoxes for instance if you’re making 100,000 dollars and the median is 500,000 then you are poor.
yeah using that measure a person in africa making median wage of $20 is ok but a person in north america with say $20,000 is poor…
Poor is relative.
Were the pharaohs poor?
They didn’t even have cell phones. Poor guys.
Of course the statistics are abused by those who have no idea what they mean or where they come from.
For example 1/8th of Americians are on food stamps because they are to poor to afford food. However if you look up what they actually count you will see absurdity such as counting anyone who has every worried about the cost of food as someone unable to afford food!
Hi
Well, it depends on what you wanna assess when you’re talking about “poverty”. Poverty can be primarily defined as the situation when you have less material/financial resources than others. But then we would all be “poors” except one (THE richest guy on the plant). Moreover, a millionaire in USD is earning less than a billionnaire in USD, but he’s not poor. So poverty is more than just “getting less than others”.
“Poverty in the US” is a benchmark/comparison of the existing population in the US to a norm: the “minimum” level of living standards passed which your basic human needs are not covered and you have not chance to keep your dignity (be able to keep clean, dressed, eat something, get some place where to stay, socialize with other people from the community, etc.). To ne poor is to earn less or just enought to cover your basic needs and survive. When your financial situation does not allow you to reach this minimum level of comfort, then you’re poor.
Others institution and recognized academics seniors like A. SEN will complete this definition adding that finally, poverty is when you cannot fully use your “capabilities”, i e your capacities, your potential to develop = when you cannot ensure your individual rights and freedom to act.
Usually, the given answer would be “just check GDP”. But if your passed the 1st year exam in your university, you would notice that this macro indicators is excesively aggregated and you would probably go for more realistic and accurate indicators. Another common answer is “check the GDP per capita ratio”… which provides an interesting but useless value: the average wage distributed, divided by the number of inhabitant in the US (including 1 years old babies, etc.) As you know GDP is not equivalent to the aggregate of all national incomes, and is not the earning got by the population, because of market and state biais, as well as so many other biais, etc. Well, forget about GDP, it’s too poor as an indicator 
There is a bunch of definitly more intersting and more accurate indicators to check how poor is the population in your country (US or any other country). These indicators does not refer to financial data (because of so many biais caused by adquisitive power biais, inflation biais, social status biais, monetary exchange biais, possible limits to individual liberty on the country, etc.).
In my opinion the more advanced indicator to check “how poor is my people” are the infantile mortality rate and average lifespan.
These two figures are easy to get and very easy to use for a benchmark. It provides you with an indice and a broad idea of how poor may be your people, “in average”. 3 ideas to know if people in the US is poor:
at the macro level (international) compare these two figures with the ones in others country you dislike (France, UK, Cuba, Russia). you can check it on commies-free sources such as https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
at the national level, you can check what are the geographic areas in the US where these two figures are lower than the US national average and then you’ll find where are the poors (which blocks, which cities, which states).
within the US population, you can decide a threshold for each value, based on the average of another country, or else, and compared it to the average (or even better, to the median value) of the whole US population. For example, you would get the proportion of “poors” with the same lifespan than in india, or else.