11 Facts About Mollie Orshansky

Mollie Orshansky continued graduate studies in economics and statistics at the Department of Agriculture Graduate School at American University.

In 1939, Mollie Orshansky became a research clerk with the Children's Bureau; working on biometric studies of child health, growth, and nutrition.

In 1945, Mollie Orshansky moved to the US Department of Agriculture; where she spent the next thirteen years as a family economist, director of the Program Statistics Division, and a food economist.

In 1958, Mollie Orshansky joined the Social Security Administration as a social science research analyst in the Office of Research and Statistics.

In 1963, Mollie Orshansky developed the official measurement of poverty used by the US government.

Mollie Orshansky used the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet as the basis for a cost-of-living estimate; and to calculate a cost of living for families of different sizes and composition.

In 1976, Mollie Orshansky received the Distinguished Service Award in recognition for her leadership in creating the first nationally accepted measurements of income adequacy and applying them to public policy.

Mollie Orshansky was hospitalized in the autumn of 2001, and a legal battle ensued over her care.

Mollie Orshansky was taken to New York, according to her wishes, but a judge who had appointed a guardian tried to compel her return to Washington DC.

The judge was overruled on appeal, and Mollie Orshansky died in Manhattan several years later.

Mollie Orshansky's development of the Poverty Thresholds was a plot element in an episode of the United States television program The West Wing.