Countering Rector's claims, experts who study poverty call his work "pseudo-social science" and accuse him of twisting facts to promulgate a right-wing agenda.
Regardless of how he's perceived, Rector is known for having the ear of U.S. policymakers.
For 20 years, Rector, 60, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, has huddled with Republicans in Congress to devise plans to limit benefits for the poor.
Many credit his analysis of American poverty for helping to alter the welfare system in 1996, when it morphed from an entitlement program to one that requires recipients to get jobs or training.
"What Grover Norquist is to income taxes, Rector is to poverty programs," said Sheldon Danziger, director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. Norquist is the antitax advocate who claims 236 U.S. House members and 41 senators as signatories to his famous no-tax-increase pledge.
"Rector is very, very influential with House Republicans and has been for years," Danziger said.
Rector's latest report for the Heritage Foundation - centered on air conditioners and other "amenities" among the poor - was released in July and has been widely disseminated in newspapers around America.
Conservative radio and television personalities, including Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, often cite Rector's work.
"It is really extraordinary to think about these conveniences that are enjoyed by these people," O'Reilly recently said in reference to Rector's statement that 78 percent of poor families have air-conditioning and 64 percent have cable or satellite TV.
That's echoed by conservative activists and bloggers such as Jennifer Stefano, cochair of the Loyal Opposition of PA, a tea-party group in the Philadelphia suburbs.
"If you can afford a microwave and cable TV, I don't see how the government can call you poor," Stefano said. "The idea of poverty is not what most Americans think it is."
