News & Events
Eve Galanter, WWN Chair: A better way to measure poverty
April 9, 2010
WWN Chair Eve Galanter has an opinion piece featured in The Capital Times of Madison focusing on the US Census Bureau’s creation of a new supplemental poverty measure and the Wisconsin Women’s Network’s flagship project, the Wisconsin Elder Economic Security Initiative.
Galanter writes, “Elders in Wisconsin are having a tough time making ends meet with one out of five living on Social Security alone. The average Social Security payment for Wisconsin’s elders is $15,034. This payment barely surpasses the original federal poverty line, and is not enough for these elders to be economically secure. According to the Elder Index, the average amount a single Wisconsin elder renter needs is $19,242 a year. In Dane County, it’s $20,777.
The proposed supplemental poverty measure is a good first step, because it will improve on how poverty is measured by providing new data including the cost components of food, housing and clothing. But the supplemental poverty measure alone is not enough.”
