Poverty Measurement in the US

Posted on January 10, 2014 by admin

• 1-in-3 Americans experience at least temporary poverty; poverty stats over the years, By Rich Exner, January 8, 2014, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty, new estimates from the Census Bureau show that nearly one in three Americans spent at least some time in poverty over a three-year period. This is double the national poverty rate for 2012, illustrating that many more people live in poverty for at least brief periods. The national rates take into account income for an entire year. The short-term poverty rate released on Tuesday found that 31.6 percent of Americans spent at least two months in poverty from 2009 to 2011 – an increase of 4.5 percentage points from 2005 to 2007. But it also showed that only 3.5 percent of Americans were in poverty for the entire 36-month period…”
• Recession led to longer bouts of poverty, Census Bureau says, By Emily Alpert Reyes, January 8, 2014, Los Angeles Times: “During the tail end of the recession and its aftermath, nearly a third of Americans suffered bouts of poverty lasting two months or more, the U.S. Census Bureau found in a newly released report. It’s little surprise that more Americans endured such episodes than before the economic slump. Spells of poverty also lasted longer after the downturn. (The National Bureau of Economic Research defines the recession as the period from December 2007 to June 2009.) Among Americans who spent at least two months in poverty between 2009 and 2011, the median spell of poverty lasted more than 6 1/2 months — nearly a month longer than between 2005 and 2007, the report found. Some Americans struggled even longer to shake off poverty, especially African Americans, the elderly and single mothers…”
• Who counts as poor in America?, By Simone Pathe, January 8, 2014, PBS Newshour: “Homeless people without shelter from this week’s frigid temperatures. Medicaid patients living out their days in a nursing home. Orphaned kids raised in foster homes. Or Dasani, the ‘invisible child’ profiled in the New York Times five-day spread. Who among them counts as poor? Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson announced a legislative agenda to wage ‘unconditional war on poverty in America.’ But how do we know what poverty is in America? Dip below the so-called ‘poverty line,’ and you’re in poverty. Sit at or above it, and you’re not. Also known as the ‘poverty threshold,’ this is the official cutoff the Census Bureau establishes for statistical tabulations of who is poor…”