host: elizabeth lower-basch? guest: for the fighting poverty, this is the measure. it is been around for a long time. so you can compare year to year. but it has some real problems. the big problem is a lot of things if we do that are most effective, you do not get any credit for in the official poverty measure. so if a family get food stamps, that is not officially list them out of poverty. a family earned income tax credit, which we know is very effective at lifting families out of poverty, it is not counted in the official measure. if you look that total spending, a lot of it is on health care, which is obviously very important to low income families, to seniors receiving medicaid. but that is not counted in poverty. even if medicaid is spending you know 3000 or $40,000 a year. host: let me go to veronique de rugy's point. how we get that poverty rate changed? and get it lowered? guest: there are two things. if you measure it with the modernized measure which does take things like food stamps and unemployment