A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty (2019) / Chapter Skim
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2 A Demographic Portrait of Child Poverty in the United States
2 A Demographic Portrait of Child Poverty in the United States
Pages 33-66
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From page 33... ...
Next we offer an overview showing which demographic subgroups of U.S. children suffer the highest poverty rates today and how child poverty rates have changed over time.
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From page 34... ...
-- importantly, it is difficult to trace the effects of more generous assistance programs (e.g., a more generous child tax credit) on consumption, whereas it is straightforward to do so for income; also, it is difficult to evaluate the measure cited by the CEA given how its poverty thresholds were derived and updated, which resulted in contemporary thresholds and poverty rates that seem unrealistically low.
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From page 35... ...
Key differences between the official measure and the SPM are summarized in Table 2-1 and in Appendix D, 2-6. 1 The large literature of poverty measurement, in the United States and abroad, addresses types of poverty measures and measurement issues that are not central to our charge -- for example, the merits of deprivation indexes compared with income- or consumption-based indexes.
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From page 36... ...
Concept Official Poverty Measure Supplemental Poverty Measure Measurement Families (individuals Resource units (official family definition plus any Units related by birth, co-resident unrelated children, foster children, marriage, or unmarried partners and their relatives) or or adoption)
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, the SPM takes only a partial step forward. SPM thresholds do not include any estimated expenditure amounts for medical care, but the SPM definition of resources subtracts families' medical out-of-pocket expenditures for any insurance premiums, copayments, deductibles, or bills for uncovered care.3 This deduction of medical out-of-pocket expenses puts some people below the SPM poverty line whom the OPM would not count as poor.4 Conversely, reductions in out-of-pocket medical care costs -- through Medicaid expansion, for example -- will reduce measured SPM poverty rates, all else equal (see, e.g., Summers and Oellerich, 2013)
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From page 38... ...
Korenman, Remler, and Hyson report some new estimates of the impact of Medicaid on poverty using this approach (see Chapter 7) .5 Adjusting the Supplemental Poverty Measure Using the TRIM3 Model Both the SPM and the OPM poverty rates are based on annual data from government surveys.
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From page 39... ...
As a result, the SPM-based child poverty rates presented in this chapter and used in the policy simulations in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are almost always lower than SPM rates reported in Census Bureau publications. The committee used the most recent version of the TRIM3 model that was available when the bulk of its simulation work was conducted.
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35.6 0 20 40 60 Child Poverty Rate (percentage) FIGURE 2-1 Rates of poverty, deep poverty, and near poverty for children using three alternative poverty measures, 2015.
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. CONCLUSION 2-1: The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)
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Hispanic children experience the highest rates of poverty and deep poverty. The poverty rates for Black (17.8%)
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Fraction of all children in each group: Black, non-Hispanic–13.9%; Hispanic–24.7%; White, non-Hispanic–51.4%; Other–10.0%. SPM = Supplemental Poverty Measure.
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SPM = Supplemental Poverty Measure. SOURCE: Estimates from TRIM3 commissioned by committee, which include adjustment for underreporting and from CONCLUSION 2-2: Poverty rates for children vary greatly by the Census Bureau child's race and ethnicity.
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. Figure 2-4 shows that child poverty rates are inversely related to the education level of the parents.
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From page 46... ...
Workers in the Household Nearly four-fifths of all children live in families with at least one fulltime working adult and, as shown in Figure 2-6, the TRIM3 SPM poverty rates for these children (6.5%) are correspondingly low.
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From page 47... ...
NOTE: Fraction of all children in each group: No biological parent – 4.6%; Single parent – 23.6%; Two biological parents – 71.7 %; other – 0.1%. SPM = Supplemental Poverty Measure.
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From page 48... ...
NOTE: Fraction of all children in each group: No workers – 6.3%; 1+ part-time or part-year worker – 14.1%; 1+ full-year, full time worker– 79.6%. SPM = Supplemental Poverty Measure.
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From page 49... ...
Children living in households in which all members are citizens have a poverty rate of 10.2 percent, nearly 3 percentage points below the 13.0 percent overall child poverty rate. By contrast, living in households with noncitizens -- particularly unauthorized immigrants -- is associated with higher poverty rates, even for children who are themselves U.S.
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FIGURE 2-7 TRIM3-SPM rates of poverty, deep poverty, and near poverty for children, by citizenship status of child and adults in household, 2015. NOTE: Fraction of all children in each group: Child is not a citizen, some in household are unauthorized–1.1%; Child is a citizen, some in household are u nauthorized–6.9%; All household members are citizens–81.5%; Other–10.0%.
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From page 51... ...
.4 0 25 50 75 100 Child Poverty Rate (percentage) FIGURE 2-8 TRIM3-SPM rates of poverty, deep poverty, and near poverty for children, by age of parent, 2015.
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From page 52... ...
citizens but living in households with family members who are unauthorized. Children in families with no workers have by far the highest rates of poverty and near poverty, but even full-time work is insufficient to lift one-quarter of children living with full-time workers above the 150 percent Supplemental Poverty Measure poverty line.
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From page 53... ...
2015 county child poverty rates from Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) Program data.
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About one in seven children live in counties with Counties withhigh child poverty (Official Poverty Measure child poverty persistently OPM Child Poverty Rates 20% or Higher in 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2008-2012 20% since 1980)
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10 0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Years FIGURE 2-11 OPM and SPM child poverty rates, 1967–2016. NOTE: The SPM poverty measure is anchored in 2012 living standards and adjusted back to 1967 using the Consumer Price Index.
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From page 56... ...
Figure 2-11 shows both OPM- and anchored SPM-based child poverty rates from 1967 to 2016. As noted before, over this period OPM-based child poverty rates increased from 16.6 percent to 18.0 percent, while the anchored SPM indicates that child poverty actually decreased by nearly half -- from 28.4 percent to 15.6 percent.17 SPM poverty rates are higher than OPM poverty rates in the earlier years of the period in part because of the higher SPM threshold and (to a lesser extent)
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From page 57... ...
(Historical trends in OPM- and SPM-based child poverty rates by race and ethnicity between 1970 and 2016 are presented in Appendix D, 2-8.) CONCLUSION 2-5: When measured by the Official Poverty Measure, poverty rates changed very little between 1967 and 2016; by contrast, when measured by the anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)
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From page 58... ...
15.6 10 8.2 4.5 0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Years FIGURE 2-12 Trends in Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rates of poverty, deep poverty, and near poverty for children, 1967–2016.
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Absolute poverty measures the fraction of families in a country whose incomes fall below some fixed amount, regardless of how affluent the country is. For this reason, high-income countries will tend to have lower absolute poverty rates than lower-income countries.
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From page 60... ...
FIGURE 2-13 Child poverty in the United States and four other anglophone countries, using three alternative measures, various years. NOTES: OECD-50 = Poverty rate defined as 50 percent below each country's median income; LIS-SPM-40 = poverty rate defined as below the 40th percentile in each country's income rate defined as 50 percent belowon the Luxembourg LIS SPM-40 = Studyrate NOTE: OECD-50 = Poverty distribution, based each country's median income; Income poverty (LIS)
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Finally, we compare rates of deep poverty and near poverty in the United States and these peer countries using the LIS and the absolute SPM poverty measure (see Figure 2-14)
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1.9 1.1 29.2 Poverty + 46.4 near poverty 37.2 (<150% of LIS-SPM 21.6 40 poverty line) 27.2 0 25 50 75 Child Poverty Rate (percentage)
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From page 63... ...
. Waging war on pov erty: Poverty trends using a historical supplemental poverty measure.
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From page 64... ...
. Understanding Income-to-Threshold Ratios Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure: People with Moderate Income.
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From page 65... ...
. Trends in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure.
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