A pobreza dos índices de "pobreza" (4)

Ao que parece o índece de pobreza usado nos EUA não é um índice de pobreza relativa. Ou pelo menos não é óbvio que seja. Segundo a Wikipédia:

The first official poverty line for the United States was developed by Mollie Orshansky for the Social Security Administration in 1964. It was amended, then later adopted for the Lyndon Johnson administration's War on Poverty as a general statistic on poverty. Orshansky's definition calculated the minimum amount of income a family unit would need to purchase food for all family members to eat the cheapest nutritionally acceptable diet described by the United States Department of Agriculture. She then multiplied that number by three, the average percentage that U.S. families spent on food. Orshansky did not intend this figure to measure the minimum income necessary for survival. Rather, she meant this as a statistical tool in order to facilitate the studying of issues of poverty. (From Fisher, 1992)