Research and Analysis by Gordon M. Fisher
The 1984 Federal Poverty Income Guidelines
from Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 47 No. 7 (released July 1984)
The 1985 Federal Poverty Income Guidelines
from Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 48 No. 7 (released July 1985)
The Development and History of the Poverty Thresholds
from Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 55 No. 4 (released October 1992)
Poverty Guidelines for 1992
from Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 55 No. 1 (released January 1992)
Remembering Mollie Orshansky—The Developer of the Poverty Thresholds
from Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 68 No. 3 (released December 2008)
In a federal government career that lasted more than four decades, Mollie Orshansky worked for the Children's Bureau, the Department of Agriculture, the Social Security Administration, and other agencies. While working at the Social Security Administration during the 1960s, she developed the poverty thresholds that became the federal government's official statistical measure of poverty; her thresholds remain a major feature of the architecture of American social policy and are widely known internationally.
