In an article earlier this year, Nicholas Eberstadt wrote that although the incidence of material hardship would surely rise during the recession, Washington lacked "the statistical tools to assess the coming surge in need." He described America's official poverty rate, which dates back to 1965 and President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty, as an "outdated and badly broken index." Rose D. Friedman, who died recently, wrote about measuring poverty for AEI in 1965. In the pamphlet entitled Poverty: Definition and Perspective, Friedman criticized a poverty estimate made in 1964 by the Council of Economic Advisers. Anticipating the creation of the poverty rate, Friedman wrote, "[I]f any government program is to be directed at anything like the right problems, let alone succeed in mastering them, it must be guided by a far more sophisticated and extensive study of just who are poor and how poor they are than any that is now available."

• "Poor Statistics" | Nicholas Eberstadt

• Poverty: Definition and Perspective | Rose D. Friedman

• Prices, Poverty, and Inequality | David E. Weinstein and Christian Broda

• The Increase in Leisure Inequality, 1965-2005 | Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst

• The Poverty of "The Poverty Rate" | Nicholas Eberstadt