This paper examines income and consumption based measures of poverty for those 65 and over between 1972 and 2004. This study contributes to the existing literature on poverty in several ways. First, we construct consumption based measures of poverty that improve upon measures used in previous...

This paper examines the measurement of poverty in the United States from 1972 through 2004. We investigate how poverty rates and poverty gaps have changed over time, explore how these trends differ across demographic groups, and contrast these trends for several different income and consumption...

In the U.S., analyses of poverty rates and the effects of anti-poverty programs rely almost exclusively on income data. In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data to measure the wellbeing of the poor, and, on balance,...

Benefit receipt in major household surveys is often under-reported. In recent years, as many as half of the dollars received through Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Workers’ Compensation has not been reported in the Current Population Survey (CPS). High rates of...

Benefit receipt in major household surveys is often underreported. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged populations, program takeup, the distributional effects of government programs, and studies of other program effects....

This paper considers the long-run patterns of poverty in the United States from the early 1960s to 2010. Our results contradict previous studies that have argued that poverty has shown little improvement over time or that anti-poverty efforts have been ineffective. We find that moving from...

High rates of understatement are found for many government transfer programs and in many datasets. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of economic well-being and the effects of transfer programs. We provide estimates of the extent of under-reporting for ten transfer...

We investigate well-being changes for single mother headed families targeted by recent tax and welfare reforms. Measured income changes sharply differ from consumption changes. We examine disaggregated consumption, time use, and health insurance coverage. Increases in housing and transportation...