Under the Census Bureau’s official poverty measure, poverty in the United States appears to have stagnated in recent decades. But the official poverty measure has a number of limitations: it does not capture the effect of near-cash transfers (e.g. food or housing assistance), taxes (e.g. refundable tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or Child Tax Credit), necessary expenses (out-of-pocket medical costs, child care, commuting, and more), or regional differences in cost of living. Since 2009, the US Census Bureau has released a Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) alongside the official measure to better captures the impact of taxes and transfers and social policy changes.
Our historical SPM data analysis reveals how public programs have reduced poverty over time and the increasing importance of anti-poverty policy in recent years. With this data, we are able to track long-term trends in deep poverty; urban versus rural poverty; the impacts of anti-poverty policy on poverty rates among children, young adults, working age adults, and seniors; differential impacts of policy and poverty by race and ethnicity; how policy decisions can protect households during economic downturns; and more.