Mayor Bloomberg Tackles Poverty

Politicians have mostly skirted poverty as a political issue since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on it more than four decades ago. Even the federal government’s method of measuring poverty is a relic from the 1960s — all but useless to cities and states seeking an accurate picture of the problem. Enter Michael Bloomberg, New York’s solutions-minded mayor, who recently took on the challenge — and the measurement — of poverty.

New York’s challenge in fighting poverty is especially severe; the city leads the nation in income disparity, and one in five New Yorkers lives below the official poverty line. Mr. Bloomberg has created an antipoverty laboratory, putting in place 31 initiatives so far, including an innovative program of giving cash payments to parents who keep their children healthy and in school.

The official poverty line is itself one of the main things the mayor wants to do something about. The federal government currently puts it at income of $20,650 a year for a family of four, a calculation set at three times the annual cost of basic groceries. Mr. Bloomberg wants to break free of that archaic formula, and he seems unafraid that the new metric could reveal that there are even more poor New Yorkers than we thought.

The mayor, who made his personal fortune analyzing data, seems inclined to factor in what households spend on the real big-ticket items of urban life. That includes housing, child care and utilities — expenses that did not loom as large 40 years ago. Food, meanwhile, now claims a smaller proportion of income — about one-seventh — thanks in part to mass production.

Mr. Bloomberg, who is working with the National Academy of Sciences and other experts, appears to be leaning toward factoring in housing costs and counting assistance, like food stamps, as income. The resulting yardstick should not only be more reliable, it should also help gauge the success of investments that New York is making — about $150 million, mostly in private funds — to help the poor. It could also provide a model for cities that have struggled with poverty.

Mr. Bloomberg’s war on poverty is operating on a small scale, and it has gotten far less attention than his well-publicized campaigns for gun control and against smoking. We hope that he sticks with it, and that other mayors around the country follow his admirable lead.