As should be expected, has some interesting thoughts on poverty stats. An excerpt:

If there’s good news, I assume it would be mainly that the poverty rate–and the “extreme poverty” rate–seem to have peaked, after the 2000 recession, at a lower level than they peaked after the previous recession. (See this familiar historical chart.) That’s a good thing, no? On the other hand, poverty hasn’t yet fallen to the low level achieved at the end of the Clinton boom/bubble. … Will the rate continue to fall? Has it maybe become less volatile–less sensitive to both busts and booms? Only time will tell! …
But I would think Democrats–especially Clintonite Democrats, should resist bogus bad news, like the left’s spin on the “deep poverty” number, a number that was suddenly emphasized by opponents of Clinton’s welfare reform when, after that law’s passage, the regular old poverty numbers failed to soar as predicted. The “deep poverty” number didn’t soar either, so leftish organizations like Robert Greenstein’s Center on Budget and Policy Priorities moved on to noting that “deep poverty” increased (slightly) as a percentage of all poverty–a completely confected statistic that we shouldn’t really care about. (We should care about how many people live in extreme poverty, not whether they’re a greater or lesser share of all poverty. Their share might increase, after all, simply because efforts to get the easiest-to-help out of poverty are working.) ….