In contrast, one hopes that those in the media would report accurate statistics and would be able to discern accuracy from manipulation. The basic problem is that any statistic is merely a proxy for the state of the world it attempts to measure. This is a necessary evil. In order to convey information about a sophisticated topic, one must reduce a complex world into some easily digestible form. The key in each context is whether what remains after the simplification is still relevant to the more complex reality.
Many statistics are close representations of the state of the world they attempt to measure.
Others fall short. The poverty line was chosen in the mid-1960s, varies with family size and is annually adjusted for inflation. These factors could lead the poverty rate to mistate the level of true poverty. Four other problems arise since the poverty line is a measurement of reported cash income in a given year. First, the Census Bureau can only measure whatever income is reported.