Bloomberg Calls For New Poverty Measures

New York, NY —

The Bloomberg Administration is calling on the federal government to change the way it measures poverty. Under the city's new method the percentage of New Yorkers considered poor would actually rise. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has more.

REPORTER: The new approach is meant to update a method devised in the 1960s, which was indexed to the cost of food. But according to Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, that's misleading because food consumes less of the household budget these days, while child care, housing, and health care cost much more.

GIBBS: Really, I think across all levels of government there is a full embracing of the need to manage through data and accountability and to know whether or not what you're doing will have an impact. And under the current poverty measure we don't have that. And there is mounting frustration with that.

REPORTER: Using Bloomberg's approach, the poverty rate for New York City would be 23 percent, which is 4 percent higher than the official method for calculating poverty. Local advocates for the poor praised the initiative and said one of its most important features is that it would factor in the cost of living in different cities. For WNYC, I'm Arun Venugopal.