NPR

Redefining poverty in the United States

The way we often think about poverty in the United States is as an individual failing, social welfare professor Mark Robert Rank says. So, what would happen if the U.S. redefined poverty as being impoverished of support?
Volunteers prepare food at a food distribution for the poor inside of a church in the South Bronx on March 10, 2021 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The poverty line is a historic relic.

And yet, that line determines who gets food stamps. Medicaid. And housing subsidies.

“We make

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