Into the maelstrom stirred by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's new book, which suggests many women enter the workforce for "social affirmation" when they probably could be at home caring for their children, comes a report from a Penn State economist that says America's poor families are worse off than they've ever been.

Amy Glasmeier is the lead author of a new study, "An Atlas of Poverty in America," which maps America's War on Poverty from its roots in the 1960s, to its salad days in the early 1970s, to its current, lethargic state.

Glasmeier has sent a copy of the study to Santorum, along with every other U.S. senator and representative. "He has it already," she said. "Or at least his office has it."

The study, which was compiled over several years and wasn't timed with the release of Santorum's book, disputes the contention that many two-income families could get by with a single breadwinner if only they were willing to forego some of the luxuries encouraged by a materialistic society.

"It's interesting that Sen. Santorum's comments focus on an ideal in which a mother can stay home with children and a man can support the family," Glasmeier said.

At another point in his book, however, Santorum acknowledges, "I recognize that my criticism about consumerism being a sorry replacement for real parenting applies more to middle- and upper-income parents and probably more to two-parent families than single parent homes."

Santorum's office could not be immediately reached for comment on the Penn State study. The senator's book, "It Takes a Family," argues that until the enactment of welfare reform in 1996, federal antipoverty efforts had been largely ineffective. "In 1965," it says, "21 percent of all American children under the age of 18 lived in poverty. Over the years, it fluctuated some, up and down, but in 1995, the percentage was -- 20.8 percent."

According to the PSU study, government poverty figures likely understate the number of working poor, and misunderstand how the poor must allocate their money in order to keep afloat. Poverty guidelines, for example, still assume most families spend a third of their monthly take-home income on food. But in reality, it's more like a sixth.

That's not because the cost of food has gone down. It's because the costs of housing, utilities, transportation and, for those who have it, health insurance have gone up disproportionately faster than household income.

Glasmeier's study claims that, in some states, three in 10 jobs do not pay a "living wage," which to her means any job that pays $11 an hour or more. (A full-time worker making $11 an hour brings home a gross annual paycheck of less than $23,000.) And in 17 states, the "working poor" make up more than half of the working-age population -- most of these states are in the rural Farm Belt and in the Southwest, where population growth helps keep wages low.

"With the exception of about five years in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, we have been retreating from fighting poverty," Glasmeier said. "We basically abandoned the idea that we could do anything about it."

She credited the late-'60s and early-'70s advances to a couple of Nixon-era policies that helped stave off poverty for some households -- tying Social Security increases to inflation helped keep many seniors above the poverty level, while job-training programs helped get women into the work force, giving household income numbers a lift. Glasmeier, a Democrat, was one of a handful of Pennsylvania economists who signed a petition urging Pennsylvania's politicians to increase the minimum wage. Such an increase, she argues, is not only good for the poorest of the working poor, but also good for the economy -- a point that business owners will argue.

"Poor people buy goods," she said. "If you give them more money, they spend it. ... They spend everything they make, because they don't make enough to make ends meet." Business groups usually say that increases in the minimum wage increase personnel costs, forcing job cuts.

In March, the U.S. Senate voted down a Republican plan for a $1.10 increase in the minimum wage, backed by Santorum. Some of the opposition came from lawmakers who favored a bigger increase.

Gov. Ed Rendell, who had previously said an increase in the state's $5.15 minimum wage would be bad for the business climate, now says that an increase is one of his top priorities for the autumn.