This morning in Suitland, Md., the Census Bureau will release data on the poverty rate in America in 2003. If experience is any guide, congressional Democrats and their megaphones in the press corps will focus on that “poverty rate,” along with some scary sounding numbers about how many children are languishing in poverty.

Don’t be fooled. The poverty rate and poverty line that the Democrats and most of the press focus on measures cash income before taxes. It doesn’t include the value of benefits such as food stamps, subsidized public housing, school lunches and breakfasts, and the earned income tax credit. In that sense, it’s not a particularly useful measure of actual living conditions for poor people.

In 2003 the federal government spent $21.4 billion on food stamps, at least $21 billion on housing subsidies, $8.85 billion on school lunches and breakfasts, and $36.9 billion on the earned income tax credit, for a total of $88.15 billion. So the poor in America are really at least $88.15 billion less poor than most news accounts and exaggerated Democratic congressional press releases about tomorrow’s census data would have you believe.

Even using the misleading official federal poverty definition of cash income before taxes, the poverty statistics aren’t as bad by historical standards as the Congressional Democrats, much of the press, and the professional poverty advocates would have the public believe. In 2002,for example, the poverty rate of 12.1% was lower than it was for six of the eight years of the Clinton administration. And while persistent, long-term poverty is a serious problem, it affects far fewer people than the scary-sounding numbers would have you believe. A July 2003 study of poverty from 1996 to 1999 found that more than half of poverty spells were two to four months long. If someone is poor for two months but later becomes a millionaire, it isn’t necessarily a crisis that calls for policy changes or that means President Bush must be defeated.

It’s more the nature of America, where individuals climb up and down the economic ladder over their lifetimes. As last year’s Census Bureau poverty report put it, “The people in poverty are not a static population; rather, people stay in poverty for different lengths of time. About 34.2 percent of all people were in poverty for at least 2 consecutive months from 1996 through 1999,but only 2.0 percent were in poverty every month of that 4-year period.” You don’t hear much about that 2% number because it is smaller, and therefore less ominous, than the annual poverty rate. But it is worth keeping in mind – and remember, it only counts cash income before taxes.

Another thing to remember is that many of the persons that the census bureau counts as living in “poverty” are immigrants who came to America from much poorer countries. They may be poor by American standards, but they came here by choice because in America, even the poor, with indoor plumbing and color televisions, are wealthy by the standards of much of the third world.

None of this is to suggest that private charity should not be directed to the poor, or that caring for the poor and trying to lift them of poverty isn’t a worthy task for government and private charities. A non-exaggerated sense of the scope of the problem might hurt the Democratic campaign against Mr. Bush. But there is no good reason for the poor to fear numbers that describe the situation accurately.