In 1963, a statistician for the Social Security Administration named Mollie Orshansky developed what we commonly refer to as the poverty line — a federal marker that indicates who is poor in America.
Before then, the government lacked a method to measure how many families struggled to afford basic necessities. Orshansky drew from her experience as a former Department of Agriculture (USDA) economist. She based her calculations on one of the most critical expenses for a family: its food bill. By tallying the cost to feed a family of four, based on a no-frills food plan developed by the USDA, she calculated the corresponding income needed to cover these meals plus living expenses.
