However, it is unlikely that this best estimate is exactly right. National data, however, provide a useful portrait of the poor. The poverty rate among those aged 65 and over was a record-low 9.7 percent. Poverty among some population subgroups remained extremely high. B y contrast, the poverty rate for all children under age six in married couple families was 9.0 percent.
Many poor families have incomes well below the poverty line.
This indicates that many poor families experience extreme poverty. Annual updating of the two poverty measures is straightforward. The current poverty measures are based on research done in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the early 1960s, the Social Security Administration developed a poverty measure that simply multiplied the cost of the Department of Agriculture's lowest cost food plan by three. The Census Bureau first published poverty statistics in 1967.