Over the last several months, numerous articles in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and other news sources including National Public Radio have drawn attention to the plight of the poor in America. In a detailed accounting of the 1960s media-led portrayal of poverty in America, in an article in the New Yorker, “How Poor is Poor?” John Cassidy challenges the proposition that few persons can be considered poor in America if access to material goods is taken into account. He takes on journalists and pundits who suggest if we define poor as the absence or curtailed access to such goods as cars, televisions, washing machines and houses then few if any persons in America can be considered poor and argues instead to recognize the existence and importance of relative poverty . Based on research conducted in the US and other developed countries, Cassidy argues that relative poverty in a high income country has serious debilitating consequences on the personal well being, health, and aspiration levels of the poor.

“Since relative deprivation confers many of the disadvantages of absolute deprivation, it should be reflected in the poverty statistics. A simple way to do this would be to classify a household as impoverished if its pre-tax income was, say, less than half the median income—the income of the household at the center of the income-distribution curve. In 2004, the median pre-tax household income was $44,684; a poverty line based on relative deprivation would have been $22,342. (As under the current system, adjustments could be made for different family sizes.)”

In a time of high societal angst about personal and national security, social exclusion is a critical issue that must be addressed at the highest levels of government.