Millions of the United States' residents live in poverty. In September of 2013, the Economic Research Service at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its most recent report on food insecurity, indicating that 49 million people in the United States are living in food insecure households, 15.9 million of whom are children. Estimates are that over 300,000 elderly Veterans are food insecure. Part of the problem is the old poverty line is out-of-date and, in fact, is too low. It has been updated for inflation, but that just means you’re measuring what it means to be poor today in what are essentially early 1960s terms.
We ask that the poverty threshold be updated to fit the new ideas of what our basic needs are.