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November 30, 2023
Abstract We evaluate progress in the War on Poverty as President Lyndon B. Johnson defined it, which established a 20% baseline poverty rate and adopted an absolute standard. While the…
October 30, 2023
Abstract A recent National Academy of Sciences report recommends elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to the “nation’s headline poverty statistic.” I project how making the SPM the official poverty…
October 24, 2023
…Kevin Corinth, and I am a Senior Fellow and the Deputy Director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute. This testimony reflects my personal…
October 17, 2023
…Burkhauser then discussed the history of poverty measurement, the weaknesses of the official poverty measure, and what an improved measure indicates about our success in reducing poverty. Next, Kevin Corinth…
October 11, 2023
Earlier this year, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report recommended elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to the “nation’s headline poverty statistic,” and noted that the Office…
October 5, 2023
In this post I discuss the policy implications of declaring the Supplemental Poverty Measure the new official measure, an action that could be taken unilaterally by the Director of the…
February 1, 2023
Whether poverty has risen or fallen over time is a key barometer of societal progress. Between 1970 and 2020, the official poverty rate in the United States fell by just 1.2…
August 23, 2021
By Richard V. Burkhauser, Kevin C. Corinth, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated government-mandated shutdowns caused a historic shock to the U.S. economy and a disproportionate…
July 2, 2021
Key Points The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) partly improves on the Official Poverty Measure but still suffers from several shortcomings that limit its usefulness as an effective poverty measure. The…