National Academies Press: OpenBook

An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line (2023)

Chapter: Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments

« Previous: Appendix A: Background and Specification of the OPM and the SPM
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

Appendix B

Summary of Public Comments

As part of the process to ensure the final report is objective, balanced, informed, and inclusive, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on National Statistics Panel on Evaluation and Improvements to the Supplemental Poverty Measure invited public comments to gain the input of povertymeasurement stakeholders. Researchers, policy makers, and antipoverty advocacy groups were among the stakeholders that responded. Those submitting comments were asked to outline their perceived strengths of the supplemental poverty measure (SPM) and to identify aspects in need of improvement. The public comment period was open from May 10, 2021, until July 2, 2021. This Appendix highlights several (although not all) of the prominent themes that emerged. Full text of the public comments can be acquired upon request. Those submitting comments were

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

Theme: The SPM Should Explicitly Include More Categories of Basic Needs

Several public commenters suggested that the SPM’s food, clothing, shelter, and utilities (FCSU) basic needs categories should be modernized. Zarin Ahmed, Senior Policy Analyst at FPWA, argued that the current SPM methodology results in thresholds that are only slightly higher than the official poverty measure (OPM), in part due to omission of the expenditures required for households to attain some basic needs. Along these same lines, New York City’s Center of Economic Opportunity (CEO) reported that their alternative poverty threshold—which is grounded in analyses of the Self Sufficiency Standard and income adequacy developed by the Center for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington—was about 127 percent greater than that of the SPM in 2018.

Sherman echoed the view that the SPM should explicitly recognize a broader set of basic needs categories and that the threshold should be higher to reflect current needs. In addition to FCSU, Sherman suggested that the SPM threshold should account for medical care needs (as in the Health Inclusive Poverty Measure)—a sentiment expressed by other commenters. Fremstad et al. added that, if operationally feasible, the developmental needs of children should likewise be included. The group articulated a preference that the SPM take needs such as health insurance and other goods and services necessary for social participation into account, in a parallel manner to FCSU.

Fremstat et al. argued for factoring in childcare and transportation expenditures beyond those related to work. Wimer et al. agree, noting that the Center on Poverty and Social Policy has advocated for inclusion of medical and childcare needs—currently addressed only through the subtraction of out-of-pocket expenses—in the threshold.

The NWLC representatives added that childcare and child development are basic needs and, as such, factors that SPM thresholds should reflect. NWLC acknowledged that establishing what is needed to account for diverse caregiving arrangements—e.g., those who pay for child and/or adult dependent care, those who receive childcare assistance, those who have care provided by a family member—requires consulting with experts.

Fremstad et al. addressed this point as well, noting that the National Academies’ panel and Interagency Technical Working Group on Developing a Supplemental Poverty Measure did not explicitly address children’s developmental needs beyond food, clothing, and shelter, or the related social- and cultural-participation needs. Given changing norms of what constitutes a basic standard of living and an evolved understanding of child development and wellbeing over the past half century, the group argued that such needs should be an explicit part of a contemporary poverty measure. Fremstad et al. pointed out that subtracting out-of-pocket spending on childcare needed for a parent to be employed is better than nothing, but not enough, because families who need childcare, but who are not able to pay for it out of pocket (and do not receive free or subsidized public care), are treated as having no need for childcare.

Fremstad’s group bolstered their position by citing how the SPM thresholds fall below the public’s understanding of the income needed to “not be poor.” In the mid-2010s, two surveys, one sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the other sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, found that Americans guessed the poverty line to be 16–22 percent higher than that estimated by the SPM. Similar conclusions, they noted, have emerged from budget studies and expert plans. The group proposed that establishing more “reasonable” SPM thresholds could be done by increasing the multiplier to better account for additional goods and services that are part of the subsistence norm; by directly adding in the cost of basic needs such as transportation and child development services; or by tying the threshold to a percentage of median consumption.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

Several commenters raised a subtheme of the component-expansion argument: that additional basic needs exist for the full scope of expenses incurred by people with disabilities. This point, most comprehensively articulated in the memo by Morris et al., implies that the failure to accurately capture the extent of nondiscretionary expenses experienced by people with disabilities leads the SPM to understate the extent of poverty among households that include members with disabilities (only some would be captured by the SPM subtracting medical out-of-pocket expenses). The group cited research estimating that, on average, a household at the national median income including a working-age adult with a disability incurs approximately $22,000 a year in disability-related expenses, a figure far greater that what can be accounted for by the subtracted medical out-of-pocket expenses used in SPM income calculations.

Theme: Basic Needs Are Changing in Response to Broader Societal, Economic, and Environmental Developments

Another subtheme, raised by the Children’s HealthWatch group, is how the needs of families, households, or consumer units have been changing over time. Among the broader exogenous shifts identified by HealthWatch as being especially relevant and urgent are

  1. systemic racial and ethnic inequities;
  2. escalating shifts in employment within the U.S. economy away from manufacturing and toward services (financial services but even more into lower-paying services such as hospitality services and the so-called “gig economy,” which pay relatively low wages, do not provide benefits, and lack stability of work schedules); and
  3. the rapidly intensifying effects of climate change.

Climate change, they noted, is exposing people in the United States and throughout the world to unanticipated adverse consequences that are requiring extraordinary adaptations, and thus additional expenses in the form of insurance, home modifications, disaster recovery, medical care expenditures, and more. The group believes these needs and others related to changing realities should be incorporated into our understanding of poverty as represented in the SPM.

In his comments, Sherman suggested that future expert panels should reassess the SPM approximately every 10 years or so, to account for evolving household needs.

Theme: Resource Measurement—Treatment of Credits and Debts

Several commenters raised questions about the role of tax credits in estimating consumer unit resources. The FPWA group noted that, while tax credits are important financial resources for households with low incomes, not every household eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit claims the credit (in tax year 2017, for example, almost 19 percent of eligible filers did not claim the credit in New York). Several commenters, including NWLC and Fremstad et al., identified the importance of proper timing of tax credits in the SPM. Specifically, the income from refundable tax credits should ideally be counted in the year families receive them, rather than the tax year during which they are earned (as is currently done for the SPM). The bulk of specific refundable tax benefits, they point out, is not actually received by families until after mid-February of the calendar year after the tax year in which the credits are earned. Commenters pointed out that administrative data could help resolve this timing inaccuracy as well as other aspects of the SPM resource calculation.

On the other side of the ledger, the burden of debt to families was raised. FPWA took the position that repayment of student loan debts should be considered as a deduction from income. Fremstad et al. concurred, stating that, like other mandatory expenses, repayments of student debt reduce the income available for housing, food, and other necessities. Moffitt made a pitch for broader research on resource timing—i.e., whether low-income families transfer resources from other periods into the current one. He noted that information on how families spend down assets to finance current expenditures and borrow against future resources to do the same would ideally be incorporated. In the latter category, credit cards, payday loans, and other near-cash alternatives all come into play.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

Burkhauser et al. also expressed concern about the accuracy of SPM resource accounting, emphasizing the substantial resources provided to Americans through health insurance plans provided by their employers or the government. This, they argued, makes the omission of the value of health insurance from the SPM problematic. Similarly, the SPM caps the value of rental housing assistance at the housing portion of the SPM threshold minus the tenant-paid portion of the rent. In their view, this practice ignores the full value of housing—including access to amenities—reflected in its price. For homeowners with or without mortgages, Burkhauser et al. pointed out that the substantial consumption value received from living in their homes is not fully reflected in SPM estimates of resources.

Theme: Appropriate Measurement Unit—Household, Consumer Unit, Other?

Comments by Children’s HealthWatch supported the idea of changing the unit of analysis for the SPM from the consumer unit (as currently defined) to the household. They argued that the household unit is more consistent with other measures of resource adequacy, including the OPM and various food security measures.

Wimer et al. also commented on the specifications of the unit of analysis. They suggested that the SPM would be more valuable if the Current Population Survey (CPS) contained more information on the presence of, and obligations toward, children outside of the co-resident household. Currently, they noted, the CPS has valuable information on child support payments made to other households, but—absent those payments—it cannot be ascertained which respondents have biological children living elsewhere. Adding this capability may become even more important as refundable tax credits continue to grow as an antipoverty tool, given that tax-filing rules and behaviors often depend on custodial arrangements. More data on obligations toward children outside the household would also inform initiatives to better allocation credit values and other needs/resources across households.

Theme: Setting and Updating of Thresholds

A number of public comments recommended revisiting the basic approach to setting thresholds. NWLC was critical that the SPM threshold is set at “the thirty-third percentile of spending on shelter, certain utilities, food, and clothing,” rather than the 1995 National Academies’ recommendation to set and update thresholds “equal to a percentage of median annual spending on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities multiplied by 1.2” (NRC, 1995). Their rationale was that rent for a modest two-bedroom apartment in many areas plus the cost of food alone consumes most of the poverty threshold for a two-adult family.

Questions were also raised about the SPM data approach. Sherman observed that updating the threshold annually based on 5 years of consumer expenditure data has proven to be an awkward compromise. Five years is neither short enough to reflect current conditions nor long enough to ensure a stable threshold across business cycles. The result, he argued, is that in any given year, changes in the SPM rate may perversely reflect changes in consumption 6 years ago as much as they reflect changes in family resources in the past year. He proposed that the simplest solution to this temporal problem would be for the Census Bureau to release a separate, limited set of “anchored SPM” trend tables each year, based on a recent threshold adjusted for inflation.

Burkhauser et al. were of the view that the baseline threshold calculation is overly complex and difficult to understand. This, they wrote, makes interpretation of poverty changes over time almost impossible. They would prefer to see adoption of a simple baseline concept, such as pegging the SPM threshold to the percentile given by the official poverty rate in the initial year. An absolute standard—and potentially a purely relative standard—for adjusting poverty thresholds could then be updated based on the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers; the relative measure could update thresholds by the same percentage at which the median income changes each year.

Burkhauser et al. were also critical of the current method of adjusting thresholds for families based on housing tenure. They argued that basing SPM thresholds on the same expenditure percentiles for renters, homeowners with a mortgage, and homeowners without a mortgage fails to recognize differences between these groups and difference in housing equity within groups. Their proposed solution was to include the value of home ownership in SPM resources.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

Theme: Appropriate Geographic Adjustment

Several of the public comments supported the idea of more granular geographic adjustment of poverty thresholds, while recognizing data constraints. Biderman (Contra Costa County FESP) outlined her organization’s perspective that federal poverty measures do not adequately adjust for the San Francisco Bay area’s (and other areas’) high costs of living and therefore underestimate their true poverty rates. She cited figures from the Bay Area Equity Atlas indicating that 52 percent of renters in Contra Costa County are housing burdened (i.e., those households that pay more than 30% of their income to housing), which creates a “large gap in the system of support for young children and families.” Based on an alternative measure developed by FESP, the high cost of housing in the county means that acquiring the basic needs for a family of four with an infant and a toddler requires a household annual income of $141,641; meanwhile, the median household income for a family with children in Contra Costa is $103,685. The FESP memo concluded that a better measure of poverty, especially at the county level, is “essential to helping understand the range of needs facing families and is critical to helping policy makers and providers target services more effectively.”

Hinckley (Director of Policy Mayor’s Policy Office, City of Philadelphia) agreed that for organizations like hers, poverty measurement must be local to be useful. She argued that current CPS measurements obscure substate variation in household resources, especially for regions and jurisdictions that are deeply disadvantaged. In part, this involves near-cash transfers that are administered locally (including things like school lunch programs) and vary significantly at substate levels, and local tax structures that have statistically significant effects on poverty rates. These impacts are particularly relevant for cities like Philadelphia, where a local wage tax is assessed, or New York City, where there is a local Earned Income Tax Credit.

At the same time, Hinckley congratulated the Census Bureau on making “impressive strides in supporting local policymakers” with the release of a working version of the SPM built from American Community Survey (ACS) data. Hinckley would like to see the Census Bureau formalize this product by: (1) committing to an annual schedule of releasing the ACS SPM; and (2) including the questions about near-cash transfers and necessary expenses in the ACS questionnaire.

The NYCO Office for Economic Opportunity took a stance similar to those of commenters from the other locally based organizations—that national, or even statewide, measures cannot adequately capture local environments. While acknowledging that the ACS is a valuable tool that allows poverty measurement at the public use microdata area (PUMA) level, the NYCO comment made the case for data at a sub-PUMA level to capture differences across neighborhoods. Given their specific information demands, the NYCO implemented an alternative measure of poverty for New York City in 2008, while continuing to produce an annual measure similar in methodology to the SPM. However, the NYCO measure employs ACS microdata to represent the base population and an adaptation of the SPM poverty threshold that accounts for the high cost of local housing.

Mueller et al. argued for rural/urban cost-of-living adjustments and more refined threshold adjustments for nonmetropolitan counties—an explicit criticism of the current SPM practice of assigning all nonmetropolitan areas within the same state the same adjustment which, in his view, may be severely biasing our understanding of rural poverty. To remedy the situation, he suggested that the most desirable outcome would be a county-specific adjustment. However, he acknowledged limitations of publicly available Census Bureau data to support this solution. For example, neither the CPS nor ACS microdata provide reliable information about county of residence for rural places. He pointed out that the SPM’s failure to reflect substate geographic levels limits its policy value such that many researchers and policy-focused practitioners use the OPM even when they would rather not.

Wimer et al. pointed out that an increased CPS sample size would allow for greater precision in the estimation of poverty rates and policy effects for smaller geographic areas and smaller demographic subgroups. He noted, for example, with current sample sizes it is difficult to precisely measure poverty for Native Americans, residents of major cities, or those who identify with finer-grained racial and ethnic subgroups as opposed to broad classifications like “Hispanic/Latino/a” or “Asian American/Pacific Islander.” While some progress can be made on this front by augmenting the CPS with ACS data (which have a much larger sample size) the amount of imputation involved in generating accurate SPM poverty rates in the ACS is daunting and often prohibitive.

Taking a somewhat opposing view, Burkhauser et al. suggested that adjusting thresholds across geographic areas may not be justified, since higher home prices can reflect access to greater amenities. His group advocated for removing geographic adjustments from the SPM thresholds.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

Wimer et al. added that the value of the SPM could be greater if the underlying data (the CPS) were also collected in the U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, etc. Without such data, researchers and policy makers cannot compare poverty levels between these areas and U.S. states or subpopulations using the SPM, and therefore cannot understand the ways that policies affect poverty in the territories. In Wimer’s view, such analyses would be enormously useful for understanding policy gaps in the territories, including how policies could be made more equitable.

Theme: Concerns About Use of Expenditure Data to Establish Basic Needs

Several commenters expressed concerns about the underlying data, and particularly the expenditure data, used to construct the SPM. The FPWA group was one of these, explaining that a critical difference between the SPM and the Self Sufficiency Standard used by NYC’s CEO is that the latter is based on data on the cost of housing, childcare, food, medical care, transportation, and miscellaneous costs, while the SPM uses expenditure data to deduce the costs of these items. It is a long-held argument in the literature that many families and individuals go without basic needs because they do not have the funds to purchase these services in the first place; thus, relying on expenditure data undermines the critical issue of unmet need. Additionally, the FWPA group pointed out that the existence of benefits programs does not necessarily guarantee that those benefits are accessible. For example, while a childcare subsidy exists in the United States it is grossly underfunded and families who are unable to access the benefit due to eligibility, coverage, and hardship gaps must make difficult choices in managing childcare, including forgoing paid help and employment opportunities.

NYCO also argued for improved information on parental expenditures on childcare. The NYCO poverty measure (described above) imputes childcare spending from the SIPP and, like the SPM, deducts this work-related cost from resource estimates. The SIPP sample is relatively small and inadequate for local imputation; thus, in their view, a detailed national survey on childcare is needed and would have benefits beyond poverty measurement. A well-designed survey, they suggested, could provide information on how much childcare is needed, as opposed to what parents can afford. This is key to understanding resources needed for parents to spend more time in school or the workplace—both factors that can move families out of poverty. The survey could occur on a less-than-annual basis and may be most usefully conducted as a supplement to the ACS, to capture the relation between family structure, work, income, and childcare.

Theme: Transparency of SPM Methodology

Several commenters called for simplification of the SPM methodology. The FPWA memo stated that the complex nature of the measure prevents it from being accessible, and people with low incomes have little opportunity to provide feedback on what they view as their basic needs. To improve the SPM, the FPWA urged the panel to consider the views of individuals and families with lived experiences of poverty.

Children’s HealthWatch expressed difficulty parsing equivalence scale adjustments, pointing out that explanation of the role of equivalence scales is not made adequately clear in documentation published on the Census Bureau’s website. Consequently, they felt there was a degree of arbitrariness in the use of those adjustments. However, based on published information and results from their own research, Children’s HealthWatch “supports equivalence scale Option 1: Use 0.7 for all.” In the same vein, to facilitate examination and interpretation of potential changes to the SPM in future reviews, the Children’s HealthWatch recommended listing working papers and related materials—especially status indications of which potential changes are under consideration and which have been discarded or postponed—on the Census Bureau SPM website, in chronological order.

Theme: Data Improvement

Public commenters identified a number of weaknesses with the SPM data infrastructure, some of which overlap with themes outlined above. Burkhauser et al. argued that the SPM is overly reliant on survey data. Their take on the literature is that survey response inaccuracies distort what individuals report as earned income and

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

government benefits; and the accuracy of imputed items such as taxes are affected as well. If true, such inaccuracies would cause the SPM to misidentify the most economically deprived populations and underestimate the poverty-reducing effects of safety net programs. For these reasons, Burkauser et al. support an increased role for use of administrative data on earnings, government program benefits, and other income sources, to more accurately measure SPM resources.

The NYCO public comment also indicated support for greater incorporation of administrative data into the SPM. By way of example, to address underreporting and other survey problems, NYCO uses New York State and New York City enrollment data to supplement benefit receipt information reported in the ACS. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and local administrative data are used to more accurately portray the number of recipients and the dollar value of benefit allotments, both of which are highly sensitive to local program rules. Replacing surveyed SNAP benefits data with state-level administrative data also helps remove statistical error introduced in the imputation process.

In her comment, Wheaton pointed out that the Census Bureau and others are actively working on approaches that use linked administrative data and survey data to address the problem of underreporting of program benefits in survey responses. The hope is that such linkages will result in a better measure of resources and improved poverty estimates. When considering the use of linked administrative data and survey records (or imputations based on such linkages) to measure resources, Wheaton identified three key issues requiring additional attention and research:

  1. The role of imputed income in the survey data in any such approach.
  2. The extent of inconsistencies in household membership and family relationships according to survey data and administrative data records. For example, the group’s recent study of linked SNAP administrative data and CPS data in three states found many cases in which a single parent with children appeared as some other family type in the CPS. This could occur because the children were not in the household, the adult was missing from the household, or the family appeared as a married-parent family in the CPS.
  3. The underrepresentation of some types of families in the survey data.

The NYCO comment cautioned that administrative data are not always available. The absence of reliable medical expenditure data is a notable example. Medical expenditures (premiums and out-of-pocket costs) are imputed into the ACS from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Although this relatively small national sample is not well suited to local imputation models, local administrative data are difficult to obtain and do not provide precise costs paid by individuals.

The frequency and timeliness of data was another subtheme that emerged from public comments. Hinckley pointed out that, while statistical agencies have had some success in measuring the effects and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with the Household Pulse Survey, for example, large emergency relief programs created as a response to the pandemic, like the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), were not included in nationally representative household surveys. ERAP, which provided money to renters or landlords, neatly fit the definition of a near-cash transfer that should, she argued, be included in the SPM. The SPM does not capture this important variation across state, county, territorial, and tribal government jurisdictions. Hinckley also offered support for use of administrative data to improve the quality of the SPM, but only if inclusion of those data maintains or reduces the current delay in data releases.

Hinckley also wondered if monthly poverty estimates from the CPS, which were useful for policy makers in assessing quickly changing economic need during the pandemic, should be formalized by the Census Bureau as part of the SPM program. The memo from Wimer et al. raised the same issue. His group noted that monthly poverty statistics would also allow exploration of the extent to which the SPM—which, like the OPM, is reported for the calendar year—is affected by assumptions about income smoothing across the year. More generally, policy makers, the media, and the public would benefit from more real-time measures of poverty, as are available with other major statistics such as the unemployment rate. The Wimer group argued, further, that calculating a monthly poverty measure would be useful in capturing intra-year income volatility—more common in times of economic upheaval, but also a constant reality for some segments of the population. They noted that their team at Columbia

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×

University has recently explored and produced variants of a monthly poverty measure, as has a group at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago (though this group produces annual poverty measures on a monthly basis). More frequent estimates would, in the Wimer group’s view, carry greater weight and would continue to be produced consistently over time if the federal government established a regular reporting system for poverty calculated on a monthly basis.

Moffitt offered a broad observation about the SPM data infrastructure: “Everyone recognizes the disadvantage of drawing thresholds and resources from different data sets with different sampling frames, different definitions of the family/consumer unit, different definitions of the variables, etc. Ideally, a survey would be designed for purpose with a sampling frame identical to that of the [Annual Social and Economic Supplement] ASEC but which asks the relevant CE income and expenditure questions. This would allow a direct ASEC-CE correspondence.” It is, he argued, important to have information on whether ASEC income data actually map into the expenditure items in the SPM threshold.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 123
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 124
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 125
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 126
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 127
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 128
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 129
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Public Comments." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26825.
×
Page 130
Next: Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members »
An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $25.00 Buy Ebook | $20.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

An accurate measure of poverty is necessary to fully understand how the economy is performing across all segments of the population and to assess the effects of government policies on communities and families. In addition, poverty statistics are essential in determining the size and composition of the population whose basic needs are going unmet and to help society target resources to address those needs.

An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line recommends updating the methodology used by the Census Bureau to calculate the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to reflect household basic needs. This report recommends that the more comprehensive SPM replace the current Official Poverty Measure as the primary statistical measure of poverty the Census Bureau uses. The report assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the SPM and provides recommendations for updating its methodology and expanding its use in recognition of the needs of most American families such as medical care, childcare, and housing costs.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!