12.3 percent of the population was living in poverty, only a small decline from the 14.2 percent in poverty in 1967. If, instead, Census had adjusted the poverty thresholds using the more accurate Chained CPI, 9.1 percent of the population would have been in poverty. Incorporating the better measures of the effects of new and improved products would have lowered the poverty rate even further to 6.5 percent—a decline of more than half from 1967.
