
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 19, 1990                   TAG: 9007190480
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

POLL: PUBLIC THINKS POVERTY LINE IS TOO LOW

The American public believes that it takes at least $15,000 a year for a family of four to escape poverty, a figure nearly $3,000 higher than the federal government's latest available yardstick, a survey issued Wednesday said.

If the public's income definition of real-life poverty were used, there would be 45 million people considered poor, compared with 32 million under the government's measure.

"What this report highlights is the need for urgency to act on poverty in the United States," said Ronald Pollack, executive director of Families USA Foundation, which sponsored the survey along with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Both are organizations active in social policy issues.

Pollack said that the survey represented the first systematic effort to ask the American public for a financial definition of poverty.

The federal government says that the poverty line income in 1988 was $6,155 for a single individual and $12,092 for a family of four. These numbers are updated annually, and new figures will be issued for 1989 later this year.

The survey issued Wednesday said that the public's definition calls for a poverty line of $15,017 for a family of four. The figures vary by region, with the Midwest and the South at $14,235, and the Northeast at $15,486. People polled in the Western region report the highest number, $16,790.

The report, "Real Life Poverty in America," was based on a Gallup poll of a national sample of 3,511 adults each month between July and October 1989.

by CNB