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- What is “poverty”? It is a historically relative concept, first of all. “There are new definitions [in America] of what man can achieve, of what a human standard of life should be,” Mr. Harrington writes. “Those who suffer levels of life well below those that are possible, even though they live better than medieval knights or Asian peasants, are poor. Poverty should be defined in terms of those who are denied the minimal levels of health, housing, food, and education that our present stage of scientific knowledge specifics as necessary for life as it is now lived in the United States.” His dividing line follows that proposed in recent studies by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics: $4,000 a year for a family of four and $2,000 for an individual living alone. (All kinds of income are included, such as food grown and consumed on farms.) This is the cutoff line generally drawn today.