Many more elderly people are dying in poverty than we thought, new measurement shows, By Amrith Ramkumar, August 1, 2016, Miami Herald: “When Donald Trump says almost four in 10 black American youths live in poverty, he’s technically correct. According to the official poverty measure, 36 percent of African-Americans under the age of 18 fell below the poverty line in 2014. The problem with that statistic is that the official poverty line is a flawed measurement. It doesn’t take into account benefits like food stamps and tax credits, so unlike the more recent supplemental poverty measure, it can’t account for the fact that earned income and child tax give-backs lower the poverty rate by 3.1 percentage points, and food stamps (formally known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits) cut it by 1.5 percentage points…”
Tag: Poverty measurement
Wisconsin Poverty Report
Report sheds new light on problem of poverty in Wisconsin, By Bill Glauber, June 26, 2016, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Despite an increase in jobs, there was no reduction in poverty in Wisconsin between 2013 and 2014 under a broad measure developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. Monday’s release of the eighth Wisconsin Poverty Report, produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty, showed that the poverty rate remained flat. Unlike the federal government’s official poverty measure — which is based on pretax cash income — the Wisconsin Poverty Measure accounts for family income and government benefits…”
Poverty in the UK
A third of people in the UK have experienced poverty in recent years, By Katie Allen, May 16, 2016, The Guardian: “One in three people have experienced poverty in recent years, according to figures that underline the precarious nature of work in Britain. Anti-poverty campaigners welcomed news that the proportion of people experiencing long-term, or persistent, poverty had declined to one of the lowest rates in the EU. But they highlighted Britons’ relatively high chances of falling into poverty as the latest evidence that a preponderance of low-paying and low-skilled jobs left many families at risk of hardship…”