Where was Nicholas Eberstadt when I needed him?

In 1984, the Urban Institute produced a study that purported to show how poverty had grown during the Reagan years. The trouble was, the Urban Institute used an improper base for its analysis: 1980 to 1984. It sounded plausible enough; at least no one in the press challenged it. Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, wasn’t he, and here we were in 1984, so wasn’t this a fair first-term report card? It wasn’t. Jimmy Carter was president all through 1980, the point in time when inflation truly undermined the poor as well as the middle class. The first Reagan budget was not even passed until the summer of 1981, and the supply-side tax cuts did not take hold until early 1983 (along with a rousing economic recovery). The report in no way was a fair reflection of what was going on then under Reagan policies.