I COMPLAINED about the Census Bureau's faulty methods for measuring poverty in September, so I'm very glad to report that something is being done about it. Revised numbers that take into account previously excluded forms of assistance, such as food stamps and tax credits, as well as regional variation in the cost of living, show that the number of Americans living in poverty has increased less than half as much as the September report indicated. Writing in the New York Times, Jason DeParle, Robert Gebeloff, and Sabrina Tavernise report:

One alternate census data set quietly published last week said the number of poor people has grown by 4.6 million since 2006, not by 9.7 million as the bureau reported in September. At least 39 states showed no statistically significant poverty growth despite surging unemployment, according to an analysis by The New York Times, including Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.

That's good news! It's better to measure things like this correctly rather than incorrectly, but sometimes stalwart supporters of generous anti-poverty programmes defend flawed measures that overstate the number of Americans living in poverty. My sense is that it is better to get as accurate a picture as possible, so that it is possible to show just how effective anti-poverty programmes really are. Who wants to throw more money at programmes that don't keep anyone out of poverty?

The Times nicely illustrates how the standard measures fail to reflect the success of the safety net in rescuing Americans from the cruel indignities of real poverty:

In Charlotte, Angelique Melton was among the beneficiaries. A divorced mother of two, Ms. Melton, 42, had worked her way up to a $39,000 a year position at a construction management firm. But as building halted in 2009, Ms. Melton lost her job. Struggling to pay the rent and keep the family adequately fed, she took the only job she could find: a part-time position at Wal-Mart that paid less than half her former salary. With an annual income of about $7,500 — well below the poverty line of $17,400 for a family of three — Ms. Melton was officially poor. Unofficially she was not. After trying to stretch her shrunken income, Ms. Melton signed up for $3,600 a year in food stamps and received $1,800 in nutritional supplements from the Women, Infants and Children program. And her small salary qualified her for large tax credits, which arrive in the form of an annual check — in her case for about $4,000. Along with housing aid, those subsidies gave her an annual income of nearly $18,800 — no one's idea of rich, but by the new count not poor. “They help you, my God,” Ms. Melton said. “I would not have made it otherwise.”

Welfare works! In addition to showing that anti-poverty initiatives actually keep people out of poverty, improved measures give us a more accurate picture of the distribution of poverty and near-poverty, providing policymakers intent on intelligently shoring up the safety net a sound basis for doing so.

But what about all those poor people with Xboxes?!

While most scholars have called the fuller measure a step forward, Robert Rector, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, argues that both census counts — old and new — sharply overstate the amount of deprivation in the United States. In a recent study, he cited government data showing many poor families had game systems like Xbox.

There is very little public support for programmes that would indefinitely provide assistance to households perfectly capable of economic self-sufficiency and full of modern conveniences. For my part, I favour fairly strict limits on the eligibility period for unemployment benefits, and fairly stiff job-seeking requirements for able-bodied, working-age recipients of public assistance. And I think this is the prevailing opinion. But recessions happen. Millions lose their jobs and can't easily find new ones. A lot of these people, like Ms Melton, really do need help, and they ought to get it. Who cares if the likes of Ms Melton bought her kids an Xbox a couple Christmases ago, before she lost her job? That doesn't mean she can now afford to feed her kids. It's hard to see what that has to do with anything.