The batch of data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau offered news that has been cast as both encouraging and troubling: Although the number of Americans living in poverty declined slightly in 2005, some 37 million are still stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Those who insist the growing U.S. economy is enriching a few at the expense of the masses gained political traction from the sheer size of the lower class: 12.6 percent of the population.

Those who believe a rising tide lifts all boats point to the decline -- not a reduced rate of growth, mind you, but a hard-number decline in the number of poor -- as evidence that job growth is expanding the middle class. The country's first increase in median household income since 1999, to $46,326, furthers their case.

The numbers can be manipulated by either side to support partisan positions and attack incumbent politicians who, for all their posturing, have profoundly little control over fluctuations in a global economy. Separating truth from spin can be tricky. Certainly, millions of unfortunate Americans have a low standard of living when compared with the majority. But how many of them are merely enduring tough times and how many exist in hopeless destitution?

Census data alone can never tell us, because the federal "poverty line" -- on which these numbers are based -- is statistically meaningless. There are dozens of poverty thresholds, which vary based on household income, the number of residents and the respective ages of those residents. For a family of four, the threshold is $19,971, regardless of where the family lives and what their actual needs might be.

Mississippi, which has the lowest annual median household income in the United States at $32,938, also has the highest share of American households living in "poverty" at 21.3 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

However, Mississippi's cost of living is among the nation's lowest, and 75 percent of the state's residents own their own homes, the seventh-highest rate in the country. Can someone who's truly poor afford to own a home?

Additionally, the "poverty line" doesn't take welfare benefits into consideration. A low-wage worker who receives child care vouchers, housing subsidies, food stamps, utility discounts and free health care through Medicaid might realize $30,000 per year worth of noncash benefits, yet still be considered "poor."

The poverty line isn't even the qualifying standard to be eligible for those benefits. In Maine, for example, some households can qualify for Medicaid even if their income triples the federal poverty threshold. And in most jurisdictions, eligibility for housing subsidies is based on a household's relation to the area's median income, not the poverty line. Medicaid enrollment exceeds the number of America's "poor" by more than 1 million people.

And how many of the country's poor have cell phones, cable or satellite television, microwave ovens and automobiles? The census report doesn't say. The American middle class couldn't dream of owning so many luxuries just a few decades ago.

At one time, "poverty" meant going to bed hungry and lacking basic necessities such as running water and electricity. Today, thankfully, such poverty is almost nonexistent. The country's neediest residents have so much aid available to them -- hundreds of billions of dollars each year from federal, state and local government programs, plus billions more through nonprofit organizations -- that life's true necessities are all but guaranteed. Only now, our country's collective sense of entitlement has resulted in a whole new realm of goods and services being perceived as "rights," from Internet-connected computers to occasional dining out.

Some will try to use this week's poverty data to argue that Americans are "falling behind," and that their standard of living is eroding with each passing year. They'll argue that government benefits and social services should be expanded, and that eligibility standards for such programs must be relaxed to help more people on the verge of poverty.

But anyone who thinks Americans' quality of life is worsening should look back to 1959, when, according to the census report, 22.4 percent of Americans lived in poverty. Ask anyone old enough to remember those days which times were tougher: way back then or right now?