Disclaimer

This paper reports the results of research and analysis undertaken by Census Bureau staff. It has undergone a Census Bureau review more limited in scope than that given to official Census Bureau publications. This report is released to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussions of work in progress.

I would like to use this paper as an opportunity to more fully address this question--"How much does it cost a family to live?"--as a public policy issue, since it is a question to which some of the members of the public who phone me and write to me want answers. For this conference, we are encouraged to look at issues using perspectives that cross disciplines and national boundaries. Accordingly, I will discuss four approaches to determining or estimating a socially acceptable minimum standard of living that have been developed or put into practice in recent years mainly by British social scientists, the majority of them working in the areas of social policy [a separate academic discipline in Britain] and sociology. (The principal exception to this generalization is the "subjective" poverty line approach, which was pioneered by Dutch economists.) Relatively few American policy practitioners and policy researchers are familiar with several of these approaches, and I hope that this paper may modestly reduce that lack of familiarity.