The latest Census data released on Tuesday seem to reinforce the discouraging conclusion, over the long view of history, that we haven't put much of a dent in poverty in America despite our best efforts and big expenditures on anti-poverty programs. The official poverty rate ticked down in 2013, but with 14.5 percent of the population still living below the poverty line, that share is still about what it was in 1993, and 1982, and 1966:
The total number of Americans living in poverty has grown as the U.S. population has, too. But our poverty rate seems, at best, to have fluctuated, prompting commentary with the new data Tuesdaythat the poverty rate "has been going nowhere for decades," or that the War on Poverty "has failed." But the real picture is actually somewhat better than the one shown above.
That's because the official poverty rate — the one released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday — doesn't capture the impact of many of the programs the government runs to aid the poor, such as food stamps and housing vouchers. Three years ago, Census began to release a "Supplemental Poverty Measure" that does this better. This measure, unlike the official rate, also counts how much families are spending on many major expenses, like childcare, that heavily influence a family's standard of living.
The official measure, for instance, doesn't count the Earned Income Tax Credit in calculating who lives in poverty. The supplemental measure does. The official measure doesn't account for the heavy weight of medical expenses in eating up household income and driving families into poverty. The supplemental measure does.
Because the metric is a new one, Census doesn't have much historic data on how poverty, as it's measured in this more comprehensive way, has changed over time. But last year, researchers at Columbia University tried to look back at history with their own SPM-like measure and concluded that government anti-poverty programs have made a big difference in reducing poverty, particularly among children and the absolute worst-off.
In other words: The poverty rate looks high today — and like it hasn't changed much historically — but it would be a lot higher without government programs to support the poor.
The Census Bureau won't release the 2013 Supplemental Poverty Measure until October, but officials did release this helpful chart on Tuesday using 2012 data:
In 2012, the Supplemental Poverty Rate was 16 percent (the baseline in the above chart), which was higher than the official rate of 15.1 percent. Above, we can see more clearly the impact of each government program or major family expense on the SPM. If we didn't have Social Security, the the Supplemental Poverty Rate would be 8.5 percentage points higher (with about 14.7 million more elderly Americans living in poverty). Put another way, Social Security payments are responsible for lowering the SPM by 8.5 percentage points. The school lunch program lowers it by about half a percentage point. Housing subsidies lower it by roughly another percentage point.
If the Census Bureau didn't count medical out-of-pocket expenses, the Supplemental Poverty Rate would be 3.4 percentage points lower.
The official poverty rate counts some of these income sources shown above (Social Security, unemployment insurance, Supplemental Security Income, child support and TANF). But it doesn't capture non-cash benefits that make a real difference in the quality of life of low-income families. Those benefits make the Supplemental Poverty rate significantly lower for children than the official measure shows (conversely, medical expenses make the supplemental rate for the elderly look higher).
Add these programs to the picture, and we get a clearer picture of what poverty in America might look like if we didn't spend so many resources trying to fight it.