Robert Rector, my former colleague at The Heritage Foundation and co-editor of Steering the Elephant: How Washington Works, exposes Obama’s attempt to “fix” the poverty level statistic here.  

Under the new measure, a family will be judged ?poor? if its income
falls below a certain specified income threshold. Nothing new there,
but, unlike the current poverty standards, the new income thresholds
will have a built-in escalator clause: They will rise automatically in
direct proportion to any rise in the living standards of the average
American.

The current poverty measure counts absolute purchasing power
? how much steak and potatoes you can buy. The new measure will count
comparative purchasing power ? how much steak and potatoes you can buy
relative to other people. As the nation becomes wealthier, the poverty
standards will increase in proportion. In other words, Obama will
employ a statistical trick to ensure that ?the poor will always be with
you,? no matter how much better off they get in absolute terms……

The weird new poverty measure will produce very odd results. For
example, if the real income of every single American were to magically
triple over night, the new poverty measure would show there had been no
drop in ?poverty,? because the poverty income threshold would also
triple. Under the Obama system, poverty can be reduced only if the
incomes of the ?poor? are rising faster than the incomes of everyone
else.

Another paradox of the new poverty measure is that
countries such as Bangladesh and Albania will have lower poverty rates
than the United States, even though the actual living conditions in
those countries are extremely bad. Haiti would probably have a very low
poverty rate when measured by the Obama system because the
earthquake
reduced much of the population to a uniform penniless squalor.