What is the true poverty rate in America?

A picture of you standing in front of your dirty car doesn’t mean that your car has always been and always will be dirty — or that it’s dirty because of some personal failure of yours. Nor does it mean you’re the only person around whose vehicle may become less than sparkling.

But that is the impression many have of people living in poverty in the U.S. because of the oft-cited 15 percent figure: that the minority of people with little to no money who are captured in a yearly government income and poverty report are the same people that show up in that report every year — they are “America’s po...