<P> Using a definition of relative poverty (reflecting disposable income below half the median of adjusted national income), it was estimated that, between 1979 and 1982, 17.1% of Americans lived in poverty . </P> <P> As noted above, the poverty thresholds used by the US government were originally developed during the Johnson administration's War on Poverty initiative in 1963--1964 . Mollie Orshansky, the government economist working at the Social Security Administration who developed the thresholds, based the threshold levels on the cost of purchasing what in the mid-1950s had been determined by the US Department of Agriculture to be the minimal nutritionally - adequate amount of food necessary to feed a family . Orshansky multiplied the cost of the food basket by a factor of three, under the assumption that the average family spent one third of its income on food . </P> <P> While the poverty threshold is updated for inflation every year, the basket of food used to determine what constitutes being deprived of a socially acceptable minimum standard of living has not been updated since 1955 . As a result, the current poverty line only takes into account food purchases that were common more than 50 years ago, updating their cost using the Consumer Price Index . When methods similar to Orshansky's were used to update the food basket using prices for the year 2000 instead of from nearly a half century earlier, it was found that the poverty line should actually be 200% higher than the official level being used by the government in that year . </P> <P> Yet even that higher level could still be considered flawed, as it would be based almost entirely on food costs and on the assumption that families still spend a third of their income on food . In fact, Americans typically spent less than one tenth of their after - tax income on food in 2000 . For many families, the costs of housing, health insurance and medical care, transportation, and access to basic telecommunications take a much larger bite out of the family's income today than a half century ago; yet, as noted above, none of these costs are considered in determining the official poverty thresholds . According to John Schwarz, a political scientist at the University of Arizona: </P>

Which of the following is true regarding poverty in the united states