United States poverty studies and poverty measurement: the past twenty-five years

This article discusses the contribution American social scientists have made to the study of poverty over the past 25 years as viewed from a comparative perspective. It has two parts. The first concentrates on the measurement of poverty and the fact that the U.S. poverty line remained fundamentally unchanged in that period despite increasingly important deficiencies in the way it was calculated. The second analyzes the broadened scope of U.S. research on the causes of poverty and its growing impact on poverty policy far beyond the United States.