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Candidate Obama voiced his support of efforts to cut poverty in half over the next 10 years. For President Obama to move forward on this commitment, we need a measure of poverty that will show us when we're making progress. And in the current deepening recession, it's all the more important to know how much poverty is increasing, and among which families.
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Unfortunately, the official U.S. poverty measure is outdated and inaccurate. In fact, New York City found the federal numbers so useless that they've recently produced their own poverty measure, and other cities are considering similar efforts.
