People measure many things. For example, you mention that debt isn't considered here; wealth metrics are widely studied, the poverty line just doesn't happen to

People measure many things. For example, you mention that debt isn't considered here; wealth metrics are widely studied, the poverty line just doesn't happen to be a wealth metric, but rather an income measure. I am not sure I fully comprehend the remark "The poverty line has not scaled with the increase in expenditures associated with modern living." It adjusts with inflation, and the inflation metric tries to stay relevant: the CPI basket includes housing, medical treatment and drugs, tuition, TVs, cell phones, etc. I guess the criticism comes down to the idea that somehow a cell phone should somehow adjust from an assumption of 0 from times before cell phones were popular? If we do something like that, it sounds really hard to get things right (CPI is already pretty hard to get right). What would it mean to say that standard of living improvements are outpacing alleviation of poverty? That sort of metric seems something suited for sophisticated research, not a standard government metric. Another important thing to do, one might note, that addresses some of the concern about losing track, is to take a fixed proportion of people - e.g. the bottom quintile of income earners - and study various aspects affecting their lives. This is, as I understand it, really widespread.