DURHAM, N.C. - Despite the growth in unemployment due to this past year's economic crisis, official Census Bureau poverty statistics -- set to be released in the next few weeks -- will probably show that most of the poor in the United States are employed, says a Duke University sociologist.

"There are actually more than twice as many people in working poor households as in single-mother poor households, and more than four times as many as in poor households where no one is employed," says David Brady, an associate professor of sociology at Duke.

"In addition, the way the U.S. measures poverty leads to a substantial undercount of how many Americans are defined as officially poor. By my calculations, with data from 1974 through 2004, the official measure underestimates poverty by about one third."

Brady is the author of Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2009). He says most of the differences in poverty between the U.S. and other affluent democracies are driven by politics and social policy.

"The U.S. has made virtually no progress in reducing poverty since the early 1970s, but most other affluent democracies have consistently been able to achieve social equality. America would have dramatically lower poverty if it adopted generous social policies like in Western Europe."