The national poverty measure has been flawed and inadequate for many years (“The Mayor’s Myth,” Editorial, July 15).
Congress has not moved on this issue since the National Academy of Sciences submitted its recommendations to it in 1995. This was a source of incredible frustration to the Mayor’s Commission for Economic Opportunity, which I was privileged to co-chair.
Our group worked hard to devise new strategies for tackling poverty, as defined by measures we all knew to be outdated and unreliable.
Now, Mayor Bloomberg and New York City’s Center for Economic Opportunity have taken a bold step to advance the efforts to address poverty by creating a more realistic and accurate poverty measurement tool.
Both sides could argue for the next 100 years about the “best” way to approach a new poverty measure. But the mayor and the center deserve credit for putting rubber to the road and for their leadership in advancing the conversation on this issue.
Richard D. Parsons
Manhattan