Charts: Alternative Poverty Rate Not So Bad As Official One

For years we've been told that poverty has been increasing. So it might not seem like a big deal that Majority Leader Paul Ryan claimed that poverty is worse under Obama earlier this week. At 15 percent, the official measure is high. But the official measure doesn't account for certain public benefits, such as food stamps, notes The Washington Post. An alternative measure "also indicates that a greater share of Americans are poor now than were poor under the Bush or Clinton administrations. Yet the current rate is moderate by historical standards — below its level throughout much of the Reagan administration."