This paper is an overview of an effort to answer the following question: "When analysts before Mollie Orshansky mentioned dollar figures in connection with the terms 'poverty,' 'minimum subsistence,' or 'low income,' what dollar figures did they mention?"

To study the history of American poverty lines, one must be familiar with the concept of the "standard budget." A standard budget is a list of goods and services that a family of a specified size and composition--and sometimes of a specified social class or occupational group--would need to live at a designated level of well-being, together with the estimated monthly or annual costs of those goods and services.  (The phrase "market basket" is often used nowadays to refer to this concept, but that phrase is sometimes used so loosely that it is preferable to use the more precise technical term "standard budget.") This paper focuses mainly on poverty or minimum subsistence budgets (as well as non-budget poverty lines), but also mentions some relevant developments involving higher-than- subsistence budgets. The paper deals with budgets for families, and not budgets for single working women.  Furthermore, the paper generally focuses on budgets for urban families, and not budgets for farm families.  (Both decisions were made primarily to set some limit on the quantity of material to be covered.)