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The Use and Misuse of Income Data and Extreme Poverty in the United States

Bruce D. Meyer^1,2; Derek Wu³; Victoria Mooers⁴; Carla Medalia⁵

¹ American Enterprise Institute · ² National Bureau of Economic Research · ³ University of Chicago · ⁴ Columbia University · ⁵ United States Census Bureau

Recent research suggests that the share of US households living on less than $2/person/day is high and rising. We reexamine such extreme poverty by linking SIPP and CPS data to administrative tax and program data. We find that more than 90% of those reported to be in extreme poverty are not, once we include in-kind transfers, replace survey reports of earnings and transfer receipt with administrative records, and account for ownership of substantial assets. More than half of all misclassified households have incomes from the administrative data above the poverty line, and many have middle-class measures of material well-being.

DOI

10.1086/711227

Volume

39 (S1)

Pages

S5-S58

Language

en

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