摘要：Mollie Orshansky, whose contributions led to the nation’s
offcial poverty measure, passed away in 2007 after a no-
table career as an analyst for the federal government.
1
In
the early 1960s when she developed her poverty measure,
Orshansky’s proposal—based on family cash income and
an absolute poverty threshold—made perfect sense. Presi-
dent Johnson had declared a War on Poverty in 1964, and
the nation needed a statistical picture of the poor. Although
Orshansky recognized the shortcomings of her measure, she
also knew that it provided the frst offcial gauge of poverty
that could be analyzed across years.
