Person: Orshansky, Mollie
Mollie Orshansky was an American economist and statistician who developed the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds, used for measuring household incomes.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Despite this, Mollie was admitted to Hunter College High School which was set up to educated gifted girls.
- After graduating from Hunter College High School, Mollie entered Hunter College in 1931 where she majored in mathematics and statistics.
- In 1939 Orshansky was appointed as a Research Clerk with the U.S. Children's Bureau.
- These were "by no means subsistence diets," Orshansky later wrote.
- It was at this time she did the work for which she is best known, in particular devising in 1963 the Orshansky index, which is the official measure of poverty used by the U.S. government.
- Orshansky based her poverty thresholds on the economy food plan - the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture.
- Over the following years until her retirement in 1982, Orshansky continued to apply statistics to measures of poverty.
Born 9 January 1915, Bronx, New York City, USA. Died 18 December 2006, Manhattan, New York City, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Usa, Women
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
