Romney’s focus on the raw numbers also ignores the fact that the poverty rate declined in 2013. That year, the official rate was 14.5 percent, down from 15 percent in 2012, and the lowest rate since Obama’s first year as president. More importantly, when comparing Obama to past presidents, a better measurement would be the poverty rate, since it takes population into account. And the most recent rate under Obama is not the highest that it has ever been. The rate was 15.1 percent in 1993 under President Clinton. It was 15.2 percent in 1983 under President Reagan. And it was between 17.3 percent and 22.4 percent in the seven years between 1959 and 1965 under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Even using a different measure of poverty — the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure — the rate under Obama isn’t the highest on record.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 13:06:33 +0000
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