Poverty Measures International Resources

Mesures de pauvreté : ressources internationales

Updated March 7, 2010
Page révisée le 7 mars 2010

---

[ Go to Canadian Social Research Links Home Page ]

---

On this page, you'll find links to American and other selected international resources on the subject of poverty measures.
For links to poverty measures in Canada, go to the Canadian Social Research Links Poverty Measures: Canadian resources page
----
For links to social program statistics for Canada and other countries, go to the Canadian Social Research Links Social Statistics page
For info on asset-based approaches to social policy, see the Canadian Social Research Links Asset-Based Social Policies Links page

The links below will take you further down on the page you're now reading: * Annual Update of the Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines - 2009 * The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election and American poverty measures * Poverty Guidelines, Research and Measurement (Health and Human Services) * Mollie Orshansky and her poverty thresholds * New York City poverty measure initiative * Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008 (September 10, 2008) * Census Bureau Poverty Page --- * United Kingdom * International (miscellaneous links) ----------------------------------------------------------- Related Canadian Social Research Links pages: American Government Social Research Links American Non-Government Social Research Links (A-J) American Non-Government Social Research Links (M-Z) U.S. Social Security Reform Children and Families - International Social Research Statistics Poverty measures: - Canadian poverty measures ----------------------------------------------------------- Welfare reform - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Movements in many countries around the world push for welfare reform. Sizeable and powerful reform movements exist in the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain, and France among many others. - incl. the following : * United States * The Welfare System and reform in Great Britain * The Welfare System and reform in France * ----------------------------------------------------------- Measuring poverty From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ----------------------------------------------------------- Measuring Poverty: A New Approach (U.S.) 1995 - 536 pages Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance: Concepts, Information Needs, and Measurement Methods Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council Read it Online Source: National Academy Press (NAP) - ("More than 3,000 books online free")

Poverty Dispatch - U.S. - links to news items from the American press about poverty, welfare reform, child welfare, education, health, hunger, Medicare and Medicaid, etc. Latest issues of Poverty Dispatch: March 5: General Assistance Medical Care - Minnesota US Unemployment Rate, February 2010 Unemployment and Jobless Benefits - Michigan March 4: State Budget Cuts and Medicaid - Idaho, California Colorado Benefits Management System and Medicaid March 3: Poverty Measurement - New York City State Cuts to Programs for the Poor - Minnesota High School Dropout Rate - Massachusetts Low-income Home Energy Assistance Program March 2: Poverty Measurement in the US Extension of Jobless Benefits Urban-Rural Income Gap - China LA Times Series on Grand Junction, CO Healthcare System March 1: General Assistance Medical Program - Utah State Minimum Wage - Maine Microfinance Institutions Payday Lending --- Past Poverty Dispatches - links to dispatches back to June 2006 Search Poverty Dispatches Source: Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) [ University of Wisconsin-Madison ]

Census Bureau to Develop Supplemental Poverty Measure
New measurement will complement but not replace existing statistic
Press Release
March 2, 2010
WASHINGTON—The Commerce Department’s U.S. Census Bureau is preparing to develop a Supplemental Poverty Measure that will use the best new data and methodologies to obtain an improved understanding of the economic well-being of American families and of how federal policies affect those living in poverty. The initiative to create the new statistic is included in the President’s FY2011 budget proposal.
Source
U.S. Department of Commerce
[The U.S. Census Bureau is a component of the U.S. Department of Commerce]

---

U.S. Plans New Measure for Poverty
By Sam Roberts
March 2, 2010
The federal government announced on Tuesday that it would begin producing an experimental measurement of poverty next year, a step toward the first overhaul of the formula since it was developed nearly a half-century ago by an obscure civil servant in the Social Security Administration. While the original definition — the cash income collected by a family or individual — will remain the official statistical measure for eligibility and distribution of federal assistance for the time being, “the new supplemental poverty measure will provide an alternative lens to understand poverty and measure the effects of antipoverty policies,” said Rebecca Blank, the under secretary of commerce for economic affairs
Source:
New York Times

---

New formula to give fresh look at U.S. poverty
By Amy Goldstein
March 3, 2010
The Obama administration Tuesday embraced an alternative way of defining what it means to be poor, stepping gingerly into a long-running debate over whether to revise the method that has been used to measure poverty for decades. Under a "Supplemental Poverty Measure" announced by the Commerce Department, the government is augmenting, but not replacing, the formula that determines how many people are considered to be in poverty, taking into account a wider range of expenses and income to try to create a truer portrait of which Americans are financially fragile
Source:
Washington Post

---

What Gets Measured Gets Done:
How a Supplemental Federal Poverty Measure Will Drive Smarter Policy
By Melissa Boteach, Jitinder Kohli
March 2, 2010
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said New York City Mayor and business magnate Michael Bloomberg in 2007 describing the need for an updated poverty measure. How was the traditional federal poverty measure calculated?Now it seems he is getting his wish. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that it will be developing an alternative way to measure poverty. This new method will better reflect the realities facing struggling families and ways in which current government programs can help them to get back on their feet. Unlike the traditional poverty measure, which is based in a 1960s reality, this supplemental measure will provide a more accurate accounting of household budgets and better determination of whether a family has enough resources to meet its most basic needs.
Source:
Center for American Progress

Video: Fixing the Federal Poverty Measure
Everything (OK, almost everything) you wanted to know about poverty measurement in the U.S., in one three-minute video.

---

Observations from the Interagency Technical Working
Group on Developing a Supplemental Poverty Measure (PDF - 138K, 8 pages)

---

Related links:

Measuring Poverty: A New Approach (U.S.)
1995 - 536 pages
Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance: Concepts, Information Needs, and Measurement Methods
Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council
Read it Online
Source:
National Academy Press (NAP)

---

Changing the Federal Poverty Measure...or Not
By Diana M. Pearce*
March 4, 2010
Change in the outdated federal poverty measure is long overdue. Nevertheless, the Department of Commerce's announcement of a new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) should be greeted with caution. It will not change things nearly as much as its proponents hope, and may have some unexpected effects.

What the SPM will do, is rise as living standards rise, rather than fall further and further behind -- as is the case with the current poverty measure. Indeed, the latter is "frozen" at the level of a basket of goods and services adequate for families in the 1950s, updated only for inflation. It does not allow for rapidly increasing costs, such as health care and taxes or "new" costs such as child care.

What the SPM won't do is raise the thresholds very much. Because it only includes some costs -- housing, utilities, food and clothing -- it starts at not much above the current, much too low level. In fact, since it will also introduce geographic adjustments reflecting differences in housing costs, the SPM is likely to result in lowering thresholds in less expensive areas such as rural counties or the South below the current federal poverty measure. In short, the SPM is a measure of deprivation, not a full measure of what people and families need to meet their basic needs...
Source:
Huffington Post

* Author Diana Pierce is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Center for Women’s Welfare (School of Social Work) at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is also the developer of the Self-Sufficiency Standard], which "defines the amount of income necessary to meet basic needs (including taxes) without public subsidies (e.g., public housing, food stamps, Medicaid or child care) and without private/informal assistance (e.g., free babysitting by a relative or friend, food provided by churches or local food banks, or shared housing)."

Rethinking Poverty : Report on the World Social Situation 2010 - January 2010
Fifteen years ago, in Copenhagen, global leaders at the World Summit for Social Development described poverty eradication as an ethical, political and economic imperative, and identified it as one of the three pillars of social development. Poverty eradication has since become the overarching objective of development, as reflected in the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, which set the target of halving global extreme poverty by 2015. Rethinking Poverty, the 2010 issue of the Report on the World Social Situation seeks to contribute to rethinking poverty and its eradication.

Complete report (PDF - 8MB, 203 pages)

=====> Executive summary (PDF - 196K, 8 pages)
=====> Table of contents (HTML) +links to individual chapters, including:
* Poverty: the official numbers * The poverty of poverty measurement * Deprivation, vulnerability and exclusion * Macroeconomic policies and poverty reduction * Economic liberalization and poverty reduction * Labour-market and social policies and poverty reduction * Poverty reduction programmes * Rethinking poverty reduction interventions

Source:
United Nations Department
of Economic and Social Affairs - DESA
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs provides support services to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the principal body coordinating the economic and social work of the United Nations and its operational arms.

[ UN Economic and Social Council - ECOSOC
ECOSOC was established under the United Nations Charter as the principal organ to coordinate economic, social, and related work of the 14 UN specialized agencies, functional commissions and five regional commissions.]

Happy Planet Index (HPI)
The HPI is an innovative measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives. The second compilation of the global HPI, published in July 2009, shows that we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.
- incl. links to: * Home * Learn * Explore * Engage * News

The Happy Planet Index 2.0:
Why good lives don’t have to cost the Earth (PDF - 5.2MB, 64 pages)
July 2009
You'll have to download the report to see the ranking for all 143 countries included in the study (p. 61), but here's the short version.
Best to worst:
1. Costa Rica
2. Dominican Republic
3. Jamaica
............
89. Canada
............
114. USA
............
141. Botswana
142. Tanzania
143. Zimbabwe

HPI 2.0 Excel Datafile (336K)
July 2009
Complete data file containing overall scores for HPI 2.0, as well as component results and HPI data over time for selected countries.

Earlier HPI reports:

The European (un)Happy Planet Index:
An index of carbon efficiency and well-being in the EU (PDF - 961K, 47 pages)
Published 2007

The (un)Happy Planet Index:
An index of human well-being and environmental impact (PDF - 1.6MB, 59 pages)
Published 2006

Calculate your own HPI score
Take the online survey to measure your own life expectancy, life satisfaction and ecological footprint and calculate your personal HPI score.
-----------------------
Gilles says: According to this survey, my personal Happy Planet Index (HPI) is 63.4.
This is below the target of 83, "which represents a good life that doesn’t cost the Earth."
I wonder if I could get a good Internet connection in Costa Rica?
What's your HPI?
-----------------------

Source:
nef (New Economics Foundation)
Based in the U.K., nef is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being.

See also:

Social Policy
nef aims to find ways of achieving sustainable social justice: a fair and equitable distribution of natural, social and economic resources between people, countries and generations.
Source:
nef programme areas
* Well-being * Democracy and Participation * Social Policy * Business, Finance and Economics * Valuing What Matters * Climate Change and Energy * Connected Economies * Natural Economies

---

Related links:

Is GDP An Obsolete Measure of Progress?
By Judith D. Schwartz
January 30, 2010
Since last summer the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has gone up — indeed, it grew at a surprising 5.7% rate in the 4th quarter — seeming to confirm what we've been hearing: the recession is officially over. But wait — foreclosure and unemployment rates remain high, and food banks are seeing record demand. Could it be that the GDP, that gold standard of economic data, might not be the best way to gauge a nation's relative prosperity?
(...)
One new calculation that's been attracting attention is the Happy Planet Index (HPI), which combines economic metrics with indicators of well-being, including subjective measures of life satisfaction, which have become quite sophisticated (HPI uses data from Gallup, World Values Survey, and Ecological Footprint). The HPI assesses social and economic well-being in the context of resources used, looking at the degree of human happiness generated per quantity of environment consumed.
Source:
Time Magazine (U.S.)

---

Happy Talk: The Economics of Happiness
By Carol Graham (Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy)
January 03, 2010
Last year was not a happy one. Economic crisis. Job losses. Wars. Yet, while we can quantify things such as gross domestic product or home foreclosures, it's harder to measure their impact on our collective happiness.
Source:
Brookings Institution

[ more Brookings links to articles
about Economics of Happiness ]

---

Report by the Commission on the
Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (PDF - 3.2MB, 292 pages)
By Joseph E. STIGLITZ, Amartya SEN and Jean-Paul FITOUSSI
September 2009
Source:
Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress
The Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress was created at the beginning of 2008 by the French government.

---

Similar initiatives in Canada
and elsewhere in the world:

The Canadian Index of Wellbeing - from Roy Romanow's Institute of Wellbeing

The Index of Economic Well-being - from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) - Canada

Indicators of Well-being in Canada - from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

Genuine Progress Index (GPI) for Atlantic Canada

Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) Alberta ( from the Pembina Institute)

Genuine Progress Index (GPI) Pacific

2009 Prosperity Index - from the Legatum Institute

Gross National Happiness - from The Centre for Bhutan Studies

World Values Survey

Social Indicators Links - from the Canadian Council on Social Development

---

Principles and Practicalities for
Measuring Child Poverty in the Rich Countries (PDF - 231K, 69 pages)
April 2005
By Miles Corak
[The author is Director of Family and Labour Studies at Statistics Canada.]
This paper has three objectives. The first is to discuss the major issues involved in defining and measuring child poverty. The choices that must be made are clarified, and a set of six principles to serve as a guide for public policy are stated. The second objective is to take stock of child poverty and changes in child poverty in the majority of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries since about 1990 when the Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force. Finally, the third objective is to formulate a number of suggestions for the setting of credible targets for the elimination of child poverty in the rich countries. This involves a method for embodying the ideal of children having priority on social resources into a particular set of child poverty reduction targets, it involves the development of appropriate and timely information sources, and finally it involves the clarification of feasible targets that may vary across the OECD.

* Recommended reading in the context of the ongoing debate between absolute and relative poverty lines!
[ Excerpt: "The contradiction in relying upon an 'absolute' poverty threshold in terms of commodities or incomes is evident by the empirical observation that these necessities are seen to change through time as communities experience economic growth and changes occur in both the goods that are available and the consumption patterns of the majority. This suggests that in some fundamental way it is not a simple task to gauge even the basics of survival without reference to the wider community." ]

Source:
Institute for the Study of Labor

What's new from the
Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP):

New Report Reveals Higher State Poverty Rates Based on Alternative Measure
State-by-State Report Calculates Poverty Based on Modern Measure
News Release
November 4, 2009
Washington, D.C. --- The percent of Americans living in poverty is higher than the current poverty measure captures, according to a new report that, for the first time, lists how poverty rates change in each state using a modern poverty measure. The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) compiled the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calculations of each state's poverty rate using a Census web tool and published these calculations in Measure by Measure: the Current Poverty Measure v. the National Academy of Sciences Measures.

Complete report:
Measure by Measure: the Current
Poverty Measure v. the National Academy of Sciences Measures (PDF - 687K, 11 pages)
November 2, 2009
This report highlights alternative poverty measures for each state and the District of Columbia using a Census tool that calculates alternative measures based on a National Academy of Sciences recommendation and an NAS recommendation that considers geographic price difference adjustment.

An International Prosperity Index

What Prosperity Means
By Ryan Streeter
October 27, 2009
"The Legatum Institute, where I am a senior fellow, just released the 2009 Prosperity Index, the world’s only global assessment of wealth and well-being. The Index is based on what most people would consider a fairly intuitive concept of prosperity—namely that “prospering” requires money, but ultimately much more than money. (...) The Prosperity Index builds a complex and sophisticated methodology on top of this basic and intuitive understanding of prosperity. The index ranks 104 countries covering 90 percent of the world’s population. The index consists of nine sub-indexes that are themselves comprised of 79 variables. It assesses how well nations around the world perform on economic fundamentals, innovation, government policy, health, social capital, and more. Its nine sub-indexes are based on reams of research into what makes economies grow and citizens happy."

2009 Prosperity Index - main page
- incl. links to:
* HOME * SUMMARY ( EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - KEY FINDINGS) * THE RANKINGS * COUNTRIES (COUNTRY PROFILES - COMPARE COUNTRIES) * THE REPORT * MEDIA CENTRE

Complete report (PDF - 5.2MB, 40 pages)
[Spoiler : The Nordic countries are at the top of the list, Canada is seventh and the United States ninth.]

Executive summary

Country ranking : Canada

Legatum Institute
The Legatum Institute is an independent research, policy, and advocacy organisation that promotes political, economic and individual liberty in the developing and transitioning world. The Institute undertakes original and collaborative research, publishes scholarly literature and popular distillations, and cultivates a distinguished group of advisors and fellows. It develops innovative ways to disseminate its ideas and analyses, and to test and implement its findings.
Source:
The Enterprise Blog
[ The American, A Magazine of Ideas ]
[ American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEIPPR)
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare. (...) The Institute's community of scholars is committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. ]

< Begin leftie disclaimer. >

Unlike the AEIPPR, I'm not "committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise."
I'm committed to social justice and fairness.
Libertarianism only works for the rich.
You should read their work nonetheless.

< /End leftie disclaimer .>

Annual Update of the Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines - 2009
On January 23, 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services, published its annual update of the Poverty Guidelines, taking into account increases in prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index.

"There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure: the poverty thresholds and the poverty guidelines.

The poverty thresholds are the original version of the federal poverty measure. They are updated each year by the Census Bureau (although they were originally developed by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration). The thresholds are used mainly for statistical purposes — for instance, preparing estimates of the number of Americans in poverty each year. (In other words, all official poverty population figures are calculated using the poverty thresholds, not the guidelines.) Poverty thresholds since 1980 and weighted average poverty thresholds since 1959 are available on the Census Bureau’s Web site. For an example of how the Census Bureau applies the thresholds to a family’s income to determine its poverty status, see “How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty” on the Census Bureau’s web site.

The poverty guidelines are the other version of the federal poverty measure. They are issued each year in the Federal Register by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds for use for administrative purposes — for instance, determining financial eligibility for certain federal programs. (The full text of the Federal Register notice with the 2009 poverty guidelines is available.)

The poverty guidelines are sometimes loosely referred to as the “federal poverty level” (FPL), but that phrase is ambiguous and should be avoided, especially in situations (e.g., legislative or administrative) where precision is important.

Key differences between poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines are outlined in a table under Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
See also the discussion of this topic on the Institute for Research on Poverty’s web site.."

Source:
Office of Human Services Policy
[Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning & Evaluation ]
[ Department of Health and Human Services ]

-------------------------------------------
COMMENT:
This is a distinction between the Canadian and American government poverty measurement --- in the U.S., a person's or household's eligibility for certain programs is actually tied to an official federal government poverty measure. (However, eligibility for state welfare programs that fall under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families umbrella is means-tested and not related to any poverty measure.) In Canada, eligibility for all provincial and territorial welfare programs for individuals and families is "needs-tested". Needs-testing and means-testing mean the same thing in this context --- they both involve a test that takes into account a household's financial resources and its needs. The needs test and income test are discussed in more detail on the Welfare Reforms in Canada page of this site - http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/welref.htm (near the top of the page).

-------------------------------------------
Related Reading:
- highly recommended!
-------------------------------------------

Further Resources on Poverty Measurement, Poverty Lines,
and Their History
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Background Paper on the Poverty Guidelines
- Programs That Do — and Don’t — Use the Poverty Guidelines
- The Official Federal Statistical Definition of Poverty
- Mollie Orshansky’s Development of the Poverty Thresholds
- Research on Alternative Approaches to Poverty Measurement
- Papers by ASPE Staff Relating to the History of Poverty Lines
- For Further Questions

The Development and History of the Poverty Thresholds
By Gordon M. Fisher
Social Security Bulletin
Volume 55, Number 4
1992

Previous HHS Poverty Guidelines
and Federal Register References - back to 1996

Related link:

Poverty Thresholds (1973-2007 and selected earlier years back to 1959)
(from the U.S. Census Bureau)

The Stiglitz-Sen report:

Report by the Commission on the
Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (PDF - 3.2MB, 292 pages)
Professor Joseph E. STIGLITZ, Chair, Columbia University
Professor Amartya SEN, Chair Adviser, Harvard University
Professor Jean-Paul FITOUSSI, Coordinator of the Commission, IEP
The Commission hopes that the Report will find a receptive audience among four distinct groups:
* Political leaders
* Policy-makers who wish to get a better sense of which indicators are available and useful to design, implement and assess policies aimed at improving well-being and foster social progress.
* The academic community, statisticians, and intensive users of statistics
* Civil society organisations that are both users and producers of statistics.
- incl. Canada references
Source:
Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress
The Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress was created at the beginning of 2008 by the French government. Increasing concerns have been raised since a long time about the adequacy of current measures of economic performance, in particular those based on GDP figures. The aim of the Commission is to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, to consider additional information required for the production of a more relevant picture, to discuss how to present this information in the most appropriate way, and to check the feasibility of measurement tools proposed by the Commission.

See also:

Survey of Existing Approaches to
Measuring Socia-Economic Progress (PDF - 1.18MB, 58 pages)
June 2008
"(...)GDP shortcomings, as an index for measuring socio-economic progress, feature again prominently in the public debate, following years of benign neglect. Such criticisms are almost as old as the concept itself and national accountants have repeatedly warned about limitations of GDP as a welfare indicator."
- includes references to the Index of Economic Well-Being and the Personal Security Index* in Canada, among other alternative measures of well-being.
[* The latest Personal Security Index report that appears on the website of the Canadian Council on Social Development is for 2003.]

[ Commission Working Papers and Reports - links to 10 reports ]

More media coverage:

G20: Stiglitz and Sen Come In Too Late
Analysis by Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Sep 23, 2009
A new report on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress presented earlier this month in Paris by Nobel prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen is a late, and quite modest contribution to an old debate, many experts say.
Source:
Inter Press Service News Agency

‘Poverty threshold’ update sought
By Sarah Chacko
August 11, 2009
“Members of the U.S. Congress are seeking to update the federal ‘poverty threshold’ and measure figures that determine at what income level a household is considered poor. Backers say the change will more accurately define poverty in America and show that the current measure underestimates the problem. Opponents say the change is an attempt to raise support for wasteful spending on social services. The ‘poverty threshold’ - the line by which people’s incomes are measured to determine their economic status - is what the federal government uses to determine who receives how much in services…”
Source:
Baton Rouge Advocate

[U.S.] Poor Measurement Series (undated, circa Feb/March 2009*)
Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity is pleased to announce a series of commentaries entitled “Poor Measurement” to discuss this issue. Spotlight brings together experts, advocates and policy makers to address how and why to update the federal poverty measure. The three links below are from this series.
---
* <Private rant: Why do so many governments and non-governmental organizations keep omitting the date of their reports on their dang websites??ARGH.>

(1)

Measuring Poverty in New York City
By Mark Levitan, Ph.D., Director of Poverty Research, New York City Center for Economic Opportunity
How a Local Effort Demonstrates the Need for a New National Standard

(2)

A Truly New Approach to Measuring Economic Inclusion
By Shawn Fremstad, Director of the Bridging the Gaps project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research
- Why and How We Should Change the Current Poverty Measure

(3)

Revisiting the Federal Poverty Measure*
By Rebecca M. Blank, Robert S. Kerr and Mark Greenberg
The federal government bases its poverty measure on a formula that was established in the 1960s and has not been updated since. Many experts and elected officials alike have made repeated calls for the measure to be changed, especially in light of a changed economy that has altered substantially in the nearly half-century that has passed since the federal poverty measure was first set.
---

* For a fuller exposition of the themes in the above piece, please see:
Improving the Measurement of Poverty (PDF - 835K, 39 pages)
December 2008
By Rebecca M. Blank and Mark H. Greenberg
"(...) The authors recommend the adoption of a new poverty measure, along the lines recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), in order to provide a more accurate measure of economic need in the United States. The current poverty measure relies on 1955 data and a methodology developed in the early 1960s. The current measure is not sensitive to changes in tax policy, in-kind benefits, work expenses, or medical payments; all of these have changed substantially over the years and affect the well-being of low-income families."
***
Rebecca M. Blank is the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a member of the Spotlight Advisory Council and served on the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997-1999. She was also a member of the 1995 National Academy of Sciences panel referenced in this piece.
Mark H. Greenberg is Executive Director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy, a member of the Spotlight Advisory Council and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
***
Source:
Brookings Institution
---

[ More commentary from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity <=== links to over two dozen poverty-related commentaries]

Source of the
Poor Measurement Series:
Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity is a foundation-led, non-partisan initiative aimed at ensuring that our political leaders take significant actions to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in the United States.

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

Poverty Guidelines, Research and Measurement

- incl. links to info in the following areas:

Poverty Guidelines - current and earlier HHS Poverty Guidelines

Poverty Guidelines and Poverty Measurement - Federal Register References, Further Resources on Poverty Measurement, Poverty Guidelines and their History, the Census Bureau's Poverty Home Page and Frequently Asked Questions on the Poverty Guidelines and Poverty

Poverty Research Centers - ASPE provides or has provided support to the following to conduct and report on research related to poverty:
[NOTE: each of the links below takes you to a new website with tons of reports and online resources]
* The National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan
* The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
* The Kentucky Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky
* The West Coast Poverty Research Center at the University of Washington
* The Joint Center for Poverty Research of Northwestern University and the University of Chicago
* The RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center at the University of Missouri
[ Census Bureau - the federal agency that prepares statistics on the number of people in poverty in the United States. ]

Sample report:

How to Improve Poverty Measurement in the United States (280K, 45 pages)
November 2007
By Rebecca Blank
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan and Brookings Institution
Presidential Address to the Association for Public
Policy Analysis and Management at their annual conference, November 8-10, 2007
"(..)We need to escape the argumentative box we have been in for several decades and assign responsibility for calculating a Revised Poverty Measure to an agency prepared to take on such a task. At the same time, we need to recognize the inherent limitations in any measure of income poverty. We should catch up with our European cousins and, like them, work to develop multiple measures of economic deprivation."(Conclusion)
Source:
National Poverty Center Working Paper Series <<<=== incl. links to 200+ working papers going back to 2003!
[ National Poverty Center - University of Michigan]

NOTE:
For links to other American government social research,
go to the Links to American Government Social Research Links page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us.htm

Census Bureau Poverty Page
- includes links to : * Poverty Home * Overview *What's new * Publications * Definitions * Poverty Thresholds * Poverty Data Sources * Current Poverty Data * Microdata Access * Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates * History of the Poverty Measure * Poverty Measurement Studies and Alternative Measures * Related Sites * FAQ

Poverty Measurement Studies and Alternative Measures
- includes links to the 1976 Measure of Poverty report, the 1985 Williamsburg Conference and Technical Papers 51-58, the 1995 National Academy of Sciences report and related reports and papers, and the 2005 American Enterprise Institute seminar series.

* Exploring the Use of the Views of the Public to Set
Income Poverty Thresholds and Adjust Them Over Time (PDF - 387K, 77 pages)
By Denton R. Vaughan
February 2004 (updated from June 1993)
Beginning in 1946 (more than two decades before Dutch economists began developing “subjective” poverty measures), the Gallup Poll in the U.S. repeatedly asked the following question: “What is the smallest amount of money a family of four (husband, wife, and two children) needs each week to get along in this community?” (Similar questions have been asked in Gallup Polls in Canada and Australia.) This paper by Vaughan is the most up-to-date and thorough analysis of the results of this “get-along” question. The paper uses the U.S. Gallup “get-along” responses for the period 1947-1989 plus the response to a 1989 Gallup “poverty line” question to construct a “Gallup-based” poverty line series for a four-person family for the 1947-1989 period.

* Personal Assessments of Minimum Income and Expenses:
What Do They Tell Us about ‘Minimum Living’ Thresholds and Equivalence Scales? (PDF - 1.1MB, 69 pages)
By Thesia I. Garner and Kathleen S. Short
July 2002
This and similar papers by Garner and Short are probably the most up-to-date work on “subjective” poverty measures now being done in the United States.

Poverty Thresholds (1973-2007 and selected earlier years back to 1959)

Links to Related Sites
Find other agencies or organizations which provide Poverty Measurement Research

- Poverty Measurement Working Papers
- incl. links to papers and reports organized under the following themes:
* Measuring Poverty - Background and Overview * Who are the Poor? Using Different Measures * Poverty Thresholds * Medical Care * Housing Costs * Work-related Expenses and Child Care * Taxes and Unit of Analysis * Other Approaches to Measuring Economic Well-being

History of the Poverty Measure
- links to the following papers:
* The Development of the Orshansky Thresholds and Their Subsequent History as the Official U.S. Poverty Measure, by Gordon M. Fisher (1992)
* "Changes in the Definition of Poverty", from Characteristics of the Population Below the Poverty Level: 1980
* Office of Management and Budget Statistical Policy Directive 14 (1978) - establishing the official poverty measure for federal agencies to use in their statistical work.
* The Measure of Poverty (1976) A series of technical papers about poverty measurement performed for the Poverty Studies Task Force of the Federal Interagency Committee on Education.
* Family Food Plans and Food Costs (1962)

Related Link:

Census Bureau Income Page - incl. links to : * What's New * Income Main * Overview * Reports * Definitions * Guidance about the Sources * How Income Data is Collected * Micro Data Access * Related Topics * FAQ * Current and historical income data

Census Bureau Releases Income and Poverty Estimates
Reflecting Expanded Income Definitions
Press Release
February 14, 2006
A U.S. Census Bureau report, The Effects of Government Taxes and Transfers on Income and Poverty: 2004 was released today. The report provides alternative national poverty rates that range from 8.3 percent, using a more comprehensive definition of income that includes the value of noncash benefits and excludes taxes, to 19.4 percent, using another definition of income that excludes all government payments and does not deduct taxes. The official U.S. poverty rate of 12.7 percent was announced last summer.

Complete report:

The Effects of Government Taxes
and Transfers on Income and Poverty: 2004 (PDF file - 1MB, 22 pages)
[ Summary of findings - includes the official definition and three alternative definitions of poverty in the U.S.]
"In August 2005, the Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States. The income and poverty figures in that report were based on money income alone and did not include the effect of important public programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and noncash assistance such as food stamps and public or subsidized housing programs. As in previous years, the Census Bureau is now releasing a study that includes the effect of these and other government programs on economic summary measures, such as median household income, the Gini Index of income inequality, and the percentage of people below the poverty level. This release includes fewer alternative income definitions than previous reports to provide a more focused assessment of the effect of government programs (cash and noncash transfers and taxes, including the effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit) on income and poverty summary measures." [Introduction]

Related Links:

New Census Measures Undercount Poverty
Newsflash
March 29, 2006
The Census Bureau recently unveiled new alternative poverty measures intended to provide a more complete measure of economic well-being. But flaws in the new measures cause them to understate the pervasiveness of poverty among American families, according to a new report authored by EPI senior economist Jared Bernstein and CBPP senior researcher Arloc Sherman. The report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) explores in detail how the Census Bureau devised its new measures and points out their weaknesses. For example, the new measures depart from past Census Bureau practice of accounting for child-care expenses as part of working families' work expenses. And they treat home ownership as an income source for poor families in a manner contrary to the advice of top experts and past Census Bureau reports.March 28, 2006

Complete report:

POOR MEASUREMENT:
New Census Report on Measuring Poverty Raises Concerns (PDF file - 230K, 7 pages)
March 28, 2006
"...The Census Bureau says its new report is meant to provide 'a more complete measure of economic well-being,' but the report ignores issues such as child care and medical expenses that Census staff, with help from outside experts, included in many past estimates of poverty under a comprehensive, revised poverty standard. (..) It would be of particular concern if the Census Bureau plans to continue publicizing only those poverty rates that are much lower than the current rate, and providing no indication that the lower rates are derived from poverty measures that are controversial in the research community and that many researchers regard as flawed." [Conclusion]
Source:
Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)

Census Bureau Question & Answer Center
600+ Searchable answers
Samples:
- Census 2010: Dress Rehearsal sites
- American FactFinder: Data by ZIP Code
- American Community Survey / Puerto Rico Community Survey: What is it?
- Respondent privacy protections
- State & county population estimates
- Top 10 questions
- Updated - Import & export subscription delivery status
- American Community Survey / Puerto Rico Community Survey: Important respondent questions
- American Community Survey / Puerto Rico Community Survey: Must I respond?
- U.S. population estimate: January 1, 2006
- Business owners: Women & minorities
- HELP – I am looking for a number!
- New American Community Survey data
- How to find the data you need
- Statistical Abstract media options
- National & state household median income estimates
- Latest income, poverty & health insurance data
- General economic income & poverty data
- Newsroom: Fastest growing counties & cities
- Health insurance data

Income, Earnings and Poverty in the United States: 2006

Household Income Rises, Poverty Rate Declines,
Number of Uninsured Up
Press Release
August 28, 2007
- includes a detailed backgrounder
Real median household income in the United States climbed between 2005 and 2006, reaching $48,200, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the second consecutive year that income has risen. Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate declined for the first time this decade, from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006. There were 36.5 million people in poverty in 2006, not statistically different from 2005.
The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 44.8 million (15.3 percent) in 2005 to 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006.
These findings are contained in the Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006 report [PDF file - 3MB, 78 pages]. The data were compiled from information collected in the 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).

Also released today were income, poverty and earnings data from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) for states and metropolitan areas, counties, cities and American Indian/Alaska Native areas of 65,000 population or more and all congressional districts. (This year marks the first time that the population in group quarters --- such as prisons, college dorms, military barracks and nursing homes --- is included, so the 2006 estimates are not fully comparable to the 2005 estimates.)

Income, Earnings and Poverty in the United States: 2006 (PDF file - 1.5MB, 40 pages)
August 2007

Data tables
Income data
Poverty data
Health Insurance data

Source:
American Community Survey (ACS)
The American Community Survey is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities a fresh look at how they are changing.

Poverty Statistics
- includes links to : * Poverty Home * Overview * Publications * Definitions * Thresholds * Microdata Access * Related Sites * FAQ
[ U.S. Census Bureau ]

Related Link:

Census Bureau Income Statistics Page - incl. Current Population Survey (CPS) | American Community Survey (ACS) | Decennial Census | Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) | Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) | Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates | Income Inequality | Access Tools | Definitions | Related Topics

New CBO Data show income inequality continues to widen:
After-Tax-Income for Top 1 Percent Rose by $146,000 in 2004
January 23, 2007
By Arloc Sherman and Aviva Aron-Dine
The Congressional Budget Office recently released extensive data on household incomes for 2004.[1] CBO issues the most comprehensive and authoritative data available on the levels of and changes in incomes and taxes for different income groups, capturing trends at the very top of the income scale that are not shown in Census data.
Source:
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Mismeasure of Poverty
A more accurate index is long overdue
August-September 2006
By Nicholas Eberstadt
"(...) Central as the “poverty rate” has become to antipoverty policy — or, more precisely, especially because of its central role in such policies — the official poverty rate should likewise be discarded in favor of a more accurate index, or set of indices, for describing material deprivation in modern America. The task of devising a better statistical lodestar for our nation’s antipoverty efforts is by now far overdue. Properly pursued, it is an initiative that would rightly tax both our formidable government statistical apparatus and our finest specialists in the relevant disciplines. But such exertions would also stand to benefit the common weal in as yet incalculable ways."

Source:
Policy Review
August & September 2006

Past issues of Policy Review - back to 1995
Browse all Policy Review issues by Topic
- topics include:
* Economics & Finance * Education * Energy & Environment * Global Cooperation & Relations * History & Philosophy * Law * National Security & Defense * Politics, International * Politics, U.S. * Values & Social Policy ( including Welfare Reform )

Source:
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, is a public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy—both domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
e"EPI works to strengthen democracy by providing people with the tools to participate in the public discussion on the economy, believing that such participation will result in economic policies that better reflect the public interest. (...) EPI was established in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. Today, with global competition expanding, wage inequality rising, and the methods and nature of work changing in fundamental ways, it is as crucial as ever that people who work for a living have a voice in the economic debate."

EPI issue guides:
- living wage - minimum wage - offshoring - poverty and family budgets - retirement security - social security - unemployment insurance - welfare

Minimum Wage - 40+ links to publications, tables, charts and other online resources
Living Wage - 30+ links
Poverty and Basic Family Budgets - 30+ links

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Center for Children in Poverty (Columbia University, New York)
"The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization at Columbia University. Our mission is to identify and promote strategies that prevent child poverty in the United States and that improve the lives of low-income children and families.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Poverty Related Links
- links to ~300 sites providing information about poverty in America
Source:
Institute for Research on Poverty
(University of Wisconsin)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Child, Family, & Community Indicators Book - U.S.
[Dated August 2002, posted to the Child Trends website Dec. 12, 2003]
"The California Children & Families Commission contracted for evaluation activities to support their outcome-based accountability system (called results-based accountability or RBA) to track progress in the areas of maternal and child health, child development, family functioning, and systems change. Child Trends helped produce the 550-page Child, Family, & Community Indicators Book to inform decisions about outcomes, performance measures, and other factors to include in the statewide evaluation."
Source:
Child Trends

Complete book online:
Child, Family, & Community Indicators Book (PDF file - 3.7MB, 550 pages)

Related Links:
California Children & Families Commission

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Institute for Social Research (ISR) - University of Michigan
...the nation's longest-standing laboratory for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences.
Enormous site! From this page, check out the links to ISR's four centers:  Survey Research Center - Research Center for Group Dynamics - Center for Political Studies - Population Studies Center
* See the Index of ISR Projects for a complete list of projects from all four centers - includes links to income dynamics, health dynamics, aging, public opinion research, demographics, and more...

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), located within the Institute for Social Research,  is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. ICPSR provides:
- Access to the world's largest archive of computerized social science data.
- Training facilities for the study of quantitative social analysis techniques.
- Resources for social scientists using advanced computer technologies.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
Institute for Social Research
The PSID is an ongoing longitudinal survey (since 1968) of 8,700 core households designed to illuminate the economic behavior of individuals in relation to their families as a whole. The data are collected annually, and the data files contain the full span of information collected over the course of the study. PSID data can be used for cross-sectional, longitudinal, and intergenerational analysis and for studying both individuals and families.
Child Development Supplement
In 1997, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplemented its core data collection with data on parents and  their 0- to 12-year-old children, the Child Development Supplement. The objective of this study is to provide researchers with a comprehensive, nationally representative, and longitudinal data base of [over 3,500] children and their families with which to study the dynamic process of early human capital formation. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wage Inequality, Earnings Inequality and Poverty
in the U.S. Over the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century
Peter Gottschalk (Boston College), Sheldon Danziger (University of Michigan)
This paper tracks distributional changes over the last quarter of the twentieth century. We focus on three conceptually distinct distributions: the distribution of wages, the distribution of annual earnings and the distribution of total family income adjusted for family size. We show that all three distributions became less equal during the last half of the 1970's and the 1980's. This was, however, not the case during the 1990's. Wage inequality stabilized, earnings inequality declined and family income inequality actually continued to rise. We decompose changes in family income inequality over the last quarter century and show that roughly half of the increase is accounted for by changes in the distribution of earnings. This suggests that further research on family income inequality should pay as much attention to changes in the distribution of other income sources as to factors affecting the labor market.
Complete report (PDF file - 2.5MB, 61 pages)
May 2003
Source:
eScholarship@BC initiative of the Boston College Libraries

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The University of Texas Inequality Project is a small research group concerned with measuring and explaining movements of inequality in wages and earnings and patterns of industrial changes around the world. Our work so far has emphasized two techniques: the use of Theil's T statistic to compute inequality indexes from industrial data, and a combination of cluster analysis on rates of wage change and discriminant analysis to isolate the principal time patterns in changing wage structures.

Happiness Economics : We Love to See You Smile - April 10, 2007 American surveys over the past few decades seem to show that a personal sense of happpiness doesn't necessarily go along with a high Gross National Product. According to the author, many economists feel that it makes more sense to shift priorities to boosting other (non-GNP) forms of well-being, like happiness itself. Indeed, why not measure Gross National Happiness (GNH) in place of GNP? The Economics of Happiness (PDF file - 104K, 13 pages) 2005 - from the Brookings Institution A Plateau of Happiness ("A country's wealth may not always indicate the happiness of its people") Source: New York Times The Second International Conference on Gross National Happiness June 20 to June 24, 2005 Gross National Happiness: A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom October 4, 2005 "What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money. Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation. But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea. In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness..." Related link: Center for Bhutan Studies World Values Survey The World Values Survey is organised as a network of social scientists coordinated by a central body, the World Values Survey Association. (...) The World Values Survey Association is founded in order to help social scientists and policy makers better understand worldviews and changes that are taking place in the beliefs, values and motivations of people throughout the world. World Values Survey - from Wikipedia The Canadian Index of Wellbeing: Measuring What Matters The CIW is being developed as a tool to account honestly and accurately for changes in our human, social, economic and natural wealth through a new index that can best capture the full range of factors that determine wellbeing in Canada – health prevention initiatives, clear air and water, genuine progress by our Aboriginal peoples, early childhood education, and other determinants of a healthy nation. Source: The Atkinson Foundation Genuine Progress Index for Atlantic Canada Since the Second World War, economic growth statistics based on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have been widely used as a proxy for societal wellbeing and prosperity. This was not the intention of those who created the GDP. (...) GDP-based measures were never meant to be used as a measure of progress, as they are today. In fact, activities that degrade our quality of life, like crime, pollution, and addictive gambling, all make the economy grow. The more fish we sell and the more trees we cut down, the more the economy grows. Working longer hours makes the economy grow. And the economy can grow even if inequality and poverty increase. Personal Security Index 2003: A reflection of how Canadians feel five years later - includes: * Economic Security * Health Security * Physical Safety * Regional Differences Source: Canadian Council on Social Development The Happy Planet Index attempts to calculate life satisfaction and expectancy in relation to environmental impact. By this index, Vanuatu is #1, Columbia is #2, and Bhutan is #13, leaving the United States, at #150, in the dust. Source: New Economics Foundation (U.K.) Guidelines for National Indicators of Subjective Well-Being and Ill-Being (PDF file - 25K, 7 pages) November 2005 - promoted by leading happiness researcher Ed Diener and a group of 50 prominent psychologists, sociologists, and economists. World Database of Happiness - covers the following themes: * Consumption * Cultural climate * Crime * Demography * Education * Freedom * Geography * Happiness * Health * Inequality * Institutional quality * Law and order * Lifestyle * Modernity * Personality * Politics * Risks * Social climate * Values * War * Wealth Source: Erasmus University (Rotterdam)

The New Poverty Agenda:
Reshaping Policies in the 21st Century
Conference (Kingston)
August 18-20, 2008
Excerpt from the Conference theme:
"The new poverty agenda demands new policy responses. An effective anti-poverty strategy depends on a wide range of instruments: income transfers, tax policy, asset-building strategies, early childhood interventions, education, labour market programs, housing and social services. An effective response also requires a judicious balancing of general programs and targeted initiatives for particular vulnerable groups, such as children in care, recent immigrants, single-parent families, Aboriginal peoples, people with disabilities, and displaced workers."

NOTE: if you click on the link to the conference home page (The New Poverty Agenda), you'll find links to all 20+ presentation, but they're only identified by author rather than title.
To see the complete list of presentation titles, go to the Conferences page of this site:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/confer.htm

Sessions:
* The New Poverty Agenda * Income Transfers and Asset Building * The Tax Regime * Early Childhood Initiatives and Education * Addressing Poverty and Other Social Policy Challenges through Social Risk Management: A New Conceptual Framework? * Employment and Training Programs * Integrated Approaches in Communities: Place-based Interventions * Roundtable on the Politics of Poverty: Can Poverty be a Priority?

Source:
Queen's School of Policy Studies

What Does It Mean to Be Poor in a Rich Society? (PDF - 192K, 37 pages)
September 2008
Robert Haveman
Department of Economics and Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Excerpt from the abstract:
In this paper, the author attempts to broaden the discussion of poverty and poverty measurement. He first discusses the broad question of “what is poverty?” and describes various poverty concepts that have been proposed. He then describes the official U.S. poverty measure, highlights its main characteristics, and notes some of the criticisms directed toward it. Finally, he examines broader conceptions of poverty and deprivation. The paper ends with a modest proposal for the development of a broader measure of poverty and social exclusion for the United States.

Source:
Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP Discussion Paper Abstracts - 2008 <===click for 12 more papers.
[ Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) ]
[ University of Wisconsin-Madison ]

Also from IRP:

Poverty Levels and Trends in Comparative Perspective (PDF - 140K, 27 pages)
September 2008
By Daniel R. Meyer and Geoffrey L. Wallace
Excerpt from the abstract:
In 2006, 42 years after President Johnson proclaimed war on poverty, the rate of poverty according to the official measure was 12.3 percent, about the same as it was in the late-1960s. A poverty measure that incorporates additional income sources shows somewhat lower poverty, 11.4 percent, but if a relative measure (that incorporates changes in the standard of living over time) is used, poverty in 2006 would be 16.0 percent. Regardless of the exact rate, it is clear that the struggle against poverty has been protracted and difficult, and, despite a variety of social policy changes, very little progress has been made. This paper reviews the way in which poverty is officially measured in the U.S., examines which groups are most affected and how poverty has changed over time, and concludes with a comparison of U.S. poverty rates with those of other countries. The authors end with the suggestion that “perhaps it is time for a renewed war on poverty, this time fought with new commitments and different policy weapons.

United Kingdom

Minimum Income Standard (Britain)
- incl. links to:
* Detailed results 2008 * 2009 update * Work in progress * The team * Publications * Links * Join our mailing list * Contact us
A Minimum Income Standard for Britain is an ongoing programme of research to define what level of income is needed to allow a minimum acceptable standard of living in Britain today. Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, it is a collaboration between the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University and the Family Budget Unit at York University. It brings together two approaches to setting budget standards: the "consensual" negotiation of budgets by panels of ordinary people, and budgets based on research evidence and expert judgements. In MIS, members of the public negotiate budgets and experts check these decisions and advise where they think there is a case for amending them. The first results of MIS were posted in July 2008, and the results were updated in July 2009; links to both reports appear below.

---

A minimum income standard for Britain:
What people think (PDF - 236K, 64 pages)
July 2008
By Jonathan Bradshaw et al.
"(...) Poverty is currently being measured in three main ways, but none of these is producing a socially agreed minimum standard.
1. Relative income measures...
2. Measures of deprivation...
3. Budget standards..."

---

A minimum income standard
for Britain in 2009 (PDF - 427K, 24 pages)
July 2009
By Donald Hirsch, Abigail Davis and Noel Smith
Published on 1 July 2009, this report is the first annual update of the Minimum Income Standard for Britain (MIS), originally published in 2008. The standard is based on research into what members of the public, informed where relevant by expert knowledge, think should go into a budget in order to achieve a minimum socially acceptable standard of living. The report considers two aspects of uprating the standard for 2009: changes in prices that influence the cost of a minimum ‘basket’ of goods and services, and changes in living standards that may influence what items should be included in that basket.

Related links:

Joseph Rowntree Foundation
"We seek to understand the root causes of social problems,
to identify ways of overcoming them, and to show how social needs can be met in practice."

Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) (Loughborough University)

Family Budget Unit (York University)

Basic Income Earth Network
Founded in 1986, the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) aims to serve as a link between individuals and groups committed to, or interested in, basic income, i.e. an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement, and to foster informed discussion on this topic throughout Europe.

Related guaranteed annual income links:

Go to the Guaranteed Annual Income Links page:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/gai.htm

---

Poverty Reduction Strategies in the United Kingdom and Ireland
By Chantal Collin (Political and Social Affairs Division)
2 November 2007
HTML version
PDF version (98 Kb, 15 pages)
Table of Contents:
* Introduction
The United Kingdom’s Strategy to Reduce Poverty and Social Exclusion
* A. A Multi-pronged Approach
* B. Key Objectives and Measures
* C. Measuring Success
* D. Key Challenges
* E. What’s Next? Reaching Out
Ireland’s National Anti-Poverty Strategy
* A. Multi-dimensional Approach
* B. Key Targets
* C. Measuring Success
* D. What’s Next? National Action Plan for Social Inclusion
* Summary
Source:
Parliamentary Research Library
(Government of Canada)

---

From the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (U.K.):

Centenary report throws new searchlight on Britain’s poor families and neighbourhoods
Press Release
December 13, 2004
"Challenging new indicators that reveal the concentrations of child poverty, poor housing, school underachievement and crime in Britain’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods should be used by government to intensify the struggle against deprivation and social exclusion during the next 20 years, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. A report published to mark the Foundation’s 100th anniversary today argues that the new measurements should inform a comprehensive strategy for helping the poorest places as well as the poorest people – and for making sure that the life chances of children, young people and adults no longer depend so heavily on the places where they are born and live."

One Hundred Years of Poverty and Policy (PDF file - 874K,188 pages) - U.K.
November 2004

A decade of tackling poverty, but Britain's far from a fair society
Press Release
August 2, 2004
"Ten years after its groundbreaking Commission on Social Justice, set up at the request of the late John Smith, the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) is today (Mon 2) publishing an audit of social injustice. It forms the first part of ippr's work on Rethinking Social Justice, a project which assesses how Britain has changed since the 1994 Commission and sets out new policy directions for the decade ahead."

An Audit of Injustice in the UK (PDF file - 1.16MB, 68 pages)
August 2004
Will Paxton and Mike Dixon
"The interim report for ippr's 2004 social justice project presents facts and figures on the UK and its population. What has improved in the past decade and what has not? The paper is divided into five sections: 'poverty', 'shared prosperity', 'social mobility and life chances', 'equal citizenship' and 'quality of life'. It finds that much has improved in the UK over the past decade, but to ensure a legacy of a more just Britain, we can't hide from areas where we have made less progress."

Project Outline (PDF file - 152K, 11 pages)
January 2004
This paper outlines the scope and aim of ippr's Social Justice project. It is meant merely as the basis for discussion. Some of the issues raised may not be examined in detail in the final publication and other policy challenges may be added as the project develops."

Source:
Institute for Public Policy Research
"ippr is the UK's leading progressive think tank. Through our well-researched and clearly argued policy analysis, reports and publications, our strong networks in government, academia and the corporate and voluntary sectors and our high media profile, we play a vital role in maintaining the momentum of progressive thought."

U.K. Department for Work and Pensions
"The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for the Government's welfare reform agenda. Its aim is to promote opportunity and independence for all. It delivers support and advice through a modern network of services to people of working age, employers, pensioners, families and children and disabled people"

Poverty: Measures and Targets (PDF file - 355K, 81 pages) - United Kingdom
March 4, 2004
Research Paper 04/23
"There are many difficulties inherent in defining and measuring poverty. This paper looks at these, and the Government’s approach to monitoring poverty, together with a range of ‘low income’ poverty statistics. The Government has set itself a target of reducing child poverty by a quarter by 2004. This paper follows progress towards the target, and considers whether it is likely to be met. This target is a first step towards the ‘eradication’ of child poverty by 2020. A consultation process has recently led to a new measurement of child poverty that will be used to monitor progress towards future targets."
- Part I discusses poverty, social exclusion and some alternative approaches to poverty measurement
- Part II explains Households Below Average Income (HBAI) methodology and terms
- Part III presents selected HBAI statistics (including trends over time)
- Part IV presents international comparisons of low income poverty [including Canada], based on EU and OECD sources.
- Part V looks at the Government's progress in reaching its 2004/05 child poverty target
- Part VI summarises the consultation exercise started in April 2002 [ by the Department for Work and Pensions ] on a new child poverty measure to be used to judge whether the Government’s future targets for halving child poverty by 2010, and eradicating it by 2020, are met.
Source:
The United Kingdom Parliament

Related Links

Measuring child poverty consultation, Final report (PDF file - 166K, 27 pages) - United Kingdom
December 2003
Related Documents (background info)

Opportunity for All - series of annual reports (starting in 1999) with detailed information about the U.K. Government strategy against poverty and social exclusion
The first report set out "evidence-based strategy for tackling poverty and social exclusion. The report also established indicators of progress to audit the effectiveness of this strategy."

Opportunity for All: Fifth Annual Report 2003

Work and Pensions - Written Evidence
Written Evidence ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 14 January 2004.
- incl. links to over 35 submissions providing comprehensive, detailed information on child poverty and poverty measurement in the United kingdom from over 35 individuals and organizations. Presenters include the Association of London Government, the Citizen's Income Trust, Save the Children, the End Child Poverty Campaign, the Northern Ireland Anti Poverty Network, CARE, the Disability Alliance, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Department for Work and Pensions, Daycare Trust and many more.
Recommended reading!

Preliminary conclusions : Measuring child poverty consultation (PDF file - 260K, 58 pages) --- United Kingdom
May 2003
"This document sets out preliminary conclusions from Measuring child poverty: A consultation document which we published in April 2002, and outlines our recommendations and next steps."

Government publishes initial response to consultation on measuring child poverty
May 14, 2003
Press Release

Government to consult on measuring child poverty
Press Release
April 18, 2002
"The Government is to seek the views of poverty experts on how to build on current indicators to measure child poverty. The Department for Work and Pensions is publishing the "Measuring Child Poverty" consultation paper today to ensure the Government is using the best possible measure to track long-term progress in tackling child poverty. The consultation is in response to calls from academics and other poverty experts to look at different ways of measuring poverty including those used in other countries."
[The consultation period ended 10 July 2002.]

Measuring child poverty: a consultation document (PDF file - 146K, 36 pages)
April 2002
"In March 1999, the Prime Minister announced the Government’s commitment to eradicate child poverty within a generation. As we move towards this goal we want to be sure that we are measuring poverty in a way that helps to target effective policies and enables the Government to be held to account for progress."

Social Indicators (U.K.) - PDF file - 769K, 71 pages
November 2001
"The House of Commons Library Research Papers are published for the benefit of Parliament members, but this one should be of interest to both researchers and general readers wanting to learn more about contemporary British social issues. Social Indicators is the first paper in a new series that will be published three times a year. The 71-page paper includes a wide range of topic pages that present social statistics on a variety of issues, from the prison population to defense expenses to agricultural outputs. Each Social Indicator paper will also offer feature articles that give a closer look at specific subjects (in this instance,, election turnout and adult literacy) and an article on statistical sources for a particular issue (in this paper, social security statistics). The last few pages are devoted to a list of important, recent governmental statistical publications
Reviewed by:
The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2001

Does it matter that we don't agree on the definition of poverty? A comparison of four approaches (PDF file - 133K, 41 pages) - U.K.
Working Paper No. 107
May 2003
"While there is worldwide agreement on poverty reduction as an overriding goal of development policy, there is little agreement on the definition of poverty. The paper reviews four approaches to the definition and measurement of poverty - the monetary, capability, social exclusion and participatory approaches. It points out the theoretical underpinnings of the various measures, and problems of operationalising them. It argues that each is a construction of reality, involving numerous judgements, which are often not transparent."
Working Paper Series
Source:
Development Studies at Oxford

The emperor's new suit : Global poverty estimates reappraised (PDF - 354K, 66 pages)
July 2009
By S. Reddy
Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis
Summary : The recent revision of the World Bank’s global poverty estimates based on a new $1.25 (2005 PPP) poverty line underlines their unreliability and lack of meaningfulness. It is very difficult to justify various aspects of the Bank’s approach. In the short term, less weight should be given to the Bank’s poverty estimates in monitoring the first MDG. In the longer term, a solution to the observed problems requires adopting an altogether different method. Such an alternative exists but requires global institutional coordination. Until it is implemented, the crisis in the monitoring of global consumption poverty can be expected to intensify.
Geographical area : International data.
Source:
Bulletin N°186 (August 24, 2009)
Council for Employment, Income and Social Cohesion - Paris
[ Conseil de l'emploi, des revenus et de la cohésion sociale (CERC) - version française]

Two days, two reports, two very different worlds
June 29, 2007
The World Wealth Report 2007 released on Wednesday by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reports that the very rich (so-called high net worth individuals – HNWI) are getting even richer. And the forecast is the extremely wealthy are going to get even richer due to their dominance of global capital markets, especially commercial real estate and real estate investment trusts. Meanwhile, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a detailed research report on Thursday called Rising Profit Shares, Falling Wage Shares which shows that real hourly wages for workers (the people that do things, rather than own things) “have been stagnant for 30 years running”.The two studies make fascinating reading, when set side-by-side...
Source:
The Wellesley Institute Blog
[ The Wellesley Institute ]

The two reports:

Canadian workers’ paycheques in 30-year holding pattern : Study
Press Release
June 28, 2007
OTTAWA – Canadians are working harder and smarter, contributing to a growing economy, but their paycheques have been stagnant for the past 30 years, says a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Complete study:

Rising Profit Shares, Falling Wage Shares - (PDF File, 301K, 16 pages)

Related link:

www.GrowingGap.ca
GrowingGap.ca is a project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
"(...)What does the growing gap look like? In 2004, the richest 10% of families raising children earned 82 times more than the poorest 10% -- almost triple the ratio of 1976, when they earned 31 times more. In after-tax terms the gap is at a 30-year high"

Source:
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

...and:

Merrill Lynch and Capgemini Release
11th Annual World Wealth Report (PDF file - 55K, 4 pages)
Press Release
27 June 2007
New York, June 27 – Driven by a strong global economy, the wealth of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs1) increased 11.4 percent to US$37.2 trillion in 2006, according to the 11th annual World Wealth Report, released today by Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and Capgemini.

World Wealth Report page
- incl. links to : * Fast Breaking Headlines * World Wealth Report Overview * State of the World's Wealth * HNWI Asset Allocation * Spotlight - New Service Model for HNW Clients * Regional Facts * About the World Wealth Report * Capgemini Wealth Management Offerings * Merrill Lynch Global Private Client * WWR Press Releases * WWR Archive * more...

Complete report:

World Wealth Report 2007 (PDF file - 3.9MB, 36 pages)

Source:
Merrill Lynch
Capgemini

Chronic Poverty Updates
===> the content of this link changes each month

Source:
Chronic Poverty Research Centre (U.K.)
CPRC is an international partnership of universities, research institutes and NGOs established in 2000 with initial funding from the UK's Department for International Development.Chronic Poverty Research Centre -

CPRC Resources - incl. links to : Working Papers - Special Journal Issues - Books, reports and other publications - Policy Briefs - CPRC Conference Papers - Methods Toolbox - Bibliographic Database - Chronic Poverty Updates

Related link:

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre (U.K.)

The case for an EU-wide measure of poverty (PDF file - 240K, 25 pages)
[European Union]
July 2005
"Income poverty in the EU is normally measured by reference to income thresholds defined at the level of each member state, independently of any consideration of inequalities in income between member states. This approach has come under strain as a consequence of the recent enlargement of the EU: income differences between member states are now so wide that what is defined as the poverty threshold in the richer member states would count as an above-average income in the poorer member states. This paper proposes that, in order to cope with this new situation, measures of poverty based on EU-wide thresholds need to be utilised alongside existing measures."
(Source: Abstract, p. 1)

This paper is based on work carried out for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions under its research programme, ‘Monitoring Quality of Life in Europe’."

Source:
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI Dublin)

Also from ESRI:

The case for an EU-wide measure of poverty (PDF file - 240K, 25 pages)
T. Fahey, The Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Working paper, n° 169, July, 25 p., (2005).
This paper is based on work carried out for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions under its research programme, ‘Monitoring Quality of Life in Europe’ (http://www.eurofound.eu.int/living/living_progress.htm).

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Bonn (Germany)
"IZA is a private, independent research institute, which conducts nationally and internationally oriented labor market research. Operating as a non-profit limited liability company, it draws financial support from the research-sponsoring activities of the Deutsche Post Foundation. (...) IZA sees itself as an international research institute and a place for communication between academic science, politics, and economic practice. A number of renowned economists involved in specific research projects cooperate with IZA, either internally or on a "virtual" basis. IZA also takes an active part in international research networks.

Sample reports:

On the definition and measurement of chronic poverty (PDF file, 23 pages)
March 2007
R. Aaberge and M. Mogstad
Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, IZA discussion paper, n° 2659
Summary :
As an alternative to the conventional methods for measuring chronic poverty, this paper proposes an interpersonal comparable measure of permanent income as a basis for defining and measuring chronic poverty. This approach accounts for the fact that individuals regularly undertake inter-period income transfers. Moreover, the approach allows for individual-specific interest rates on borrowing and saving as well as for the presence of liquidity constraints. Due to the general nature the proposed method proves useful for evaluating the theoretical basis of the standard methods for measuring chronic poverty.
Found in:
CERC Bulletin N°123, March 19, 2007
[ Council for Employment, Income and Social Cohesion - Paris ]

Principles and Practicalities for Measuring Child Poverty in the Rich Countries (PDF file - 231K, 69 pages)
April 2005
Miles Corak
"This paper has three objectives. The first is to discuss the major issues involved in defining and measuring child poverty. The choices that must be made are clarified, and a set of six principles to serve as a guide for public policy are stated. The second objective is to take stock of child poverty and changes in child poverty in the majority of OECD countries since about 1990 when the Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force. Finally, the third objective is to formulate a number of suggestions for the setting of credible targets for the elimination of child poverty in the rich countries. This involves a method for embodying the ideal of children having priority on social resources into a particular set of child poverty reduction targets, it involves the development of appropriate and timely information sources, and finally it involves the clarification of feasible targets that may vary across the OECD."

Child Poverty and Changes in Child Poverty in Rich Countries Since 1990 (PDF file - 249K, 65 pages)
April 2005
by Wen-Hao Chen, Miles Corak
"This paper documents levels and changes in child poverty rates in 12 OECD countries using data from the Luxembourg Income Study project, and focusing upon an analysis of the reasons for changes over the 1990s. The objective is to uncover the relative role of income transfers from the state in determining the magnitude and direction of change in child poverty rates, holding other demographic and labour market factors constant. As such the paper offers a cross-country overview of child poverty, changes in child poverty, and the impact of public policy in North America and Europe."
NOTE: This paper was prepared as a contribution to the Innocenti Report Card No. 6 “Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005,” UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.

Source:
2005 IZA Discussion Papers
- links to 150 IZA reports released this year + links to hundreds of reports for previous years back to 1998 (for example, there are 474 papers in the 2004 collection)

More samples of reports from the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre:

Child Poverty in Perspective :
An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries (PDF file - 64K, 2 pages)
Press Release
14 February 2007
"The six dimensions taken to measure the well- being of children – material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviours and risks, and young people’s own subjective sense of well-being – offer a picture of the lives of children, and no single dimension can stand as a reliable proxy for child well-being as a whole. The landmark report shows that among all of the 21 OECD countries there are improvements to be made and that no single OECD country leads in all six of the areas."

Complete report:

Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries -
A comprehensive assessment of the lives and well-being of children and adolescents
in the economically advanced nations (PDF file - 1.5MB, 52 pages)
February 2007
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre Report Card 7

Companion document:

Comparing Child Well-Being in OECD Countries: Concepts and Methods (PDF files - 778K, 117 pages)
Jonathan Bradshaw, Petra Hoelscher and Dominic Richardson
Innocenti Working Paper
December 2006

Innocenti Report Card 7
- includes links to the above release and report in French, Italian and Spanish, along with key findings and background papers

Innocenti Report Card no. 6
Child poverty rising in OECD countries
March 2005

Source:
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (IRC) works to strengthen the capacity of UNICEF and its cooperating institutions to respond to the evolving needs of children and to develop a new global ethic for children. It promotes the effective implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in both developing and industrialized countries, thereby reaffirming the universality of children’s rights and of UNICEF’s mandate. [ About IRC ]

Another recent release from IRC:

Canada ranked 12th out of 21 rich nations for child welfare
February 14, 2007
A new United Nations study suggests Canada lags behind other industrialized nations when it comes to child welfare.
Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Development in Rich Countries, the seventh report from UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, ranks Canada 12th overall for child well-being among 21 developed countries.
Source:
CBC.CA

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW)
IARIW's major objectives:
- the furthering of research on economic and social accounting, including the development of concepts and definitions for the measurement and analysis of income and wealth
- the development and further integration of systems of economic and social statistics
- related problems of statistical methodology

The Review of Income and Wealth, 1966-2000
Journal of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth
"The major objectives of The Review of Income and Wealth are the furthering of research on national and economic and social accounting, including the development of concepts and definitions for the measurement and analysis of income and wealth, the development and further integration of systems of economic and social statistics, and related problems of statistical methodology"
- incl. links to full text of back issues of the journal from 1966 to 2000, with several dozen studies in each issue
- wide range of topics, including : income inequality - measuring poverty and deprivation - pension wealth - income mobility - how best to measure wefare, real income, and output - poverty indices and policy analysis - relative or absolute poverty lines - demographic trends - much more...

Relative to What?
Cross-national Picture of European Poverty
Measured by Regional, National and European Standards(PDF file - 587K, 32 pages)
June 2004
"The starting point in the paper is the relative concept of poverty. We will study how our picture of poverty will change if we accept a very relative concept of poverty. The first problem we encountered was the selection of the benchmark. A couple of alternative ways to conduct relativizations were selected. First, we applied the conventional poverty approach. The poor were those whose income remained below 60% of the national equivalent disposable income. Second, we collapsed European nations together into one data pool and calculated a common poverty line for the EU. This EU line was then applied in subsequent analyses. Thirdly, we decomposed nation states into smaller units representing the poorest and richest areas in respective countries. Data were compiled from the Luxembourg Income Study."
Source:
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York)

Global poverty estimates and the millennium goals:
Towards a Unified Framework
April 2004
"This paper discusses the compatibility of different global poverty estimates under a unified framework, and examines the compatibility of various international poverty lines used in the literature under different purchasing power parity exchange rate estimates. The paper also addresses the issue of compatibility of survey means and national accounts data."
Complete report (PDF file - 2MB, 34 pages)
Source:
International Labour Organization

Found on the Global Policy Forum (U.S.) website:
("Global Policy Forum monitors policy making at the United Nations, promotes accountability of global decisions, educates and mobilizes for global citizen participation, and advocates on vital issues of international peace and justice.")

Inequality. Now You See It, Now You Don’t (PDF file - 365K, 2 pages)
September 2003
"This article from the International Monetary Fund's monthly journal Finance & Development defines and analyzes cross-country inequality, within-country inequality, and global inequality, asking 'how much should we worry about inequality?'"
[ International Monetary Fund ]

Related Links:

A Rich Nation, a Poor Continent (NY Times article)
July 9, 2003
"The 400 richest US citizens have a combined income of $69 billion, which is more than the total income of the 166 million people living in (...) Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda and Botswana."

More Information on Inequality of Wealth and Income Distribution (Global Policy Forum --- 80+ links)

Measuring poverty in Europe : Belgium presents a European tool for fighting against poverty and social exclusion
13 September 2001
Press release by the Belgian Presidency of the European Union – Social Affairs with regard to the International Conference on “Indicators for social inclusion: Making Common EU Objectives Work” in Antwerp, 14-15 September 2001
"In order to measure the progress of the struggle against poverty and social exclusion in Europe more efficiently, the report presents a set of key-indicators."
- includes a short backgrounder and several links to related sites and material, such as...
Executive Summary
Introduction
Indicators for Social Inclusion in the European Union - Summary

New from Employment and Social Affairs [ European Commission ] [ Europa ]

Commission calls on Member States to keep up the momentum in tackling poverty and social exclusion
Press Release
December 17, 2003
Brussels,
"Tackling poverty and social exclusion is still an urgent political priority for the European Union, says the Commission in a new communication published today."
- incl. links to the draft joint report, the statistical annex, and frequently-asked questions
Commission of the European Communities

Joint Report on Social Inclusion (PDF file - 950K, 216 pages)
Brussels
December 12, 2003
"Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions summarising the results of the examination of the National Action Plans for Social Inclusion (2003-2005)"

NOTE: this enormous resource offers an in-depth analysis of efforts in the European Community (sorry, Canada and the U.S. aren't included...) to foster social inclusion and to reduce poverty.
- detailed information on the social policies and strategies of all 15 member states of the European Union, including: Situation and key trends - Progress made 2001-2003 - Strategic approach - Key policy measures - Challenges ahead
- overall analysis of social inclusion initiatives in the EU: Situation and Key Trends - Assessment of Progress made since the 2001 NAP/inclusion - Strategic approach: main objectives and key targets of the 2003 NAP/inclusion - Key policy approaches: strengths and weaknesses - Gender Perspective - Current Issues and Future Challenges

Poverty - International
- information about poverty in France, Europe, OECD countries (Canada and U.S. included...)
- links to resources are organized under the following headings:
Concepts, definitions : General principles - Monetary poverty - Subjective poverty, deprivation - Statistics criteria - Statistics and general studies - Discussions, critics
Populations : Working poor - Children, families - Young people - Gender studies - Single parent - Elderly people
Poverty dynamics
Fight against poverty : Growth - Labor market - Social transfers - Health
Recommended websites
Source : Council for Employment, Income and Social Cohesion - Paris
Conseil de l'emploi, des revenus et de la cohésion sociale - CERC[version française]
CERC is an online Information Service dealing with poverty, social minima, inwork benefits, minimum wages, etc.
NOTE: This body was created by a decree of the French government in April 2000 to aid the national policy-making process. In Canada, the National Council of Welfare was created by an Act of Parliament in 1969 to advise the federal Minister of Health and Welfare (now Social Development Canada) on matters relating to the welfare of Canadians.

Trends and Driving Factors in Income Distribution and Poverty in the OECD Area (PDF file - 843K, 168 pages)
Occasional Paper No. 42
August 2000
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
This paper summarises trends and driving factors in income distribution and poverty in 21 OECD member countries [including Canada] analysing separately the working- and the retirement-age populations.
- compares and contrasts national experiences (overall trends in income distribution over time and related factors, the distributive impact of transfers, the role of employment polarisation, trends at the bottom of the income distribution) and provides a brief summary of trends and the most likely explanations of what has been happening.
- includes information about the measurement of income poverty and income inequality
- over half of the 168 pages of this report are statistics.
Source : OECD Statistics

Also from the OECD:

Measures of Material Deprivation in OECD Countries (PDF file - 808K, 71 pages)
August 2006
By Romina Boarini and Marco Mira d'Ercole
Poverty is a complex issue, and a variety of approaches are required for its measurement and analysis. While monetary measures of income poverty are widespread, a long-standing tradition relies on non-monetary measures, based on either the respondent’s self-assessment of their own conditions or on measures of ownership of consumer goods and living standards. Measures of material deprivation fall into this latter category. These measures rest on shared judgments about which items are more important to provide a "decent" living standard, irrespective of people’s preferences and of their capacity to afford these items. (...) This paper discusses the use of material deprivation measures for an analysis of poverty in OECD countries [including Canada - text and bolding added].

Source:
OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers <===links to 45 more papers!
[ Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs ]
[ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - OECD ]

United Nations Development Programme

UNDP Poverty Home Page
Poverty Concepts and Poverty Lines
Poverty : Indicators Statistics and Measurement
- incl. links to: Development Indicators - Gender Dimensions - Measurement and Assessments - Poverty Indicators - Poverty Research - Sustainable Livelihoods

Human Development Report and Index
 (incl. links to current year and reports back to 1990)

What is poverty? Concepts and measures (PDF file - 351K, 24 pages)
December 2006
In this issue of IPC’s journal Poverty in Focus we present ten articles intended to throw light on the question of how best to define and measure poverty.

Poverty in Focus - links to nine earlier editions of this journal, going back to January 2004

Source:
International Poverty Centre
The International Poverty Centre (IPC) is a joint project between the United Nations Development Programme and the Brazilian Government to promote South-South Cooperation on applied poverty research.
[ United Nations Development Programme ]

Poverty and Human Rights (PDF file - 237K, 32 pages)
Peter Townsend
Published July 28, 2006
"Townsend presents the case for using human rights and the deprivation of human rights as a measure of poverty. He argues that the World Bank’s dollar-a-day standard, while a good temporary measure is now inconsistent, uneven and ultimately inadequate. To Townsend, the Bank’s strategies focusing on macro economic reform and that follow a neoliberal framework of privatizations and cuts in public spending have failed. He promotes an alternative strategy for poverty alleviation that includes employment creation, equitable taxation, universal social services and democratic control of Trans National corporations and agencies. Townsend hopes that by providing this alternative development strategy the most vulnerable portions of global populations would be protected, namely the elderly, sick (with terminal illness, i.e. AIDS), and children from vagaries of the market."
Source:
International Conference on The Many Dimensions of Poverty
Brasilia, 29-31 August 2005
International Poverty Centre
United Nations Development Programme

Social Policy Research Unit (SPRU)
University of York
England
Measurement of Absolute Poverty
Research Summary
In November 1998 the Eurostat Statistical Programme Committee discussed the subject of poverty statistics and delegates requested that the subject of absolute poverty be investigated. The work began in January 2000 and the final report is due in September 2000. At the bottom of the short project description on the linked page, you'll find an e-mail link to Jonathan Bradshaw (one of the principal researchers in this project) for more information.

World Bank

PovertyNet - "Resources and support for People Working to Understand and Alleviate Poverty"
(Part of the World Bank website)
- Understanding   Poverty - incl. What is Poverty - Measuring Poverty - Poverty Trends Over Time...
- Measuring poverty - incl. measurement of poverty at the country level and at the global level, plus new directions in poverty measurement
- Inequality, Poverty, and Socio-economic Performance - "...a resource on: (a) the relationship between distributional dynamics, economic growth, and poverty reduction; (b) the effect inequality might have on social outcomes and behaviors; and (c) current discussions and methodologies that might be
useful for operational and research work."

Impact Evaluation Web Site
From World Bank PovertyNet
This website aims at disseminating information and providing resources for people and organizations working to assess and improve the effectiveness of projects and programs aimed at reducing poverty.

Global Poverty Monitoring Web Site
- provides  World Bank estimates of various poverty and inequality measures  both at the regional and country level
- also gives  access to a list of poverty-related papers and to Povcal, free  software used to calculate poverty measures from grouped data.
For more sources of data on poverty, check out the World Bank PovertyNet Data Page.

Inequality, Poverty, and Socio-economic Performance
"This site aims to be a resource on: (a) the relationship between distributional dynamics, economic growth, and poverty reduction; (b) the effect inequality might have on social outcomes and behaviors; and (c) current discussions and methodologies that might be useful for operational and research work"

Related links:

The Developing World Is Poorer Than We Thought,
But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty (PDF - 193K, 46 pages)
By Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion
August 2008
The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank’s past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better data. Extreme poverty—as judged by what “poverty” means in the world’s poorest countries—is found to be more pervasive than we thought. Yet the data also provide robust evidence of continually declining poverty incidence and depth since the early 1980s. For 2005 we estimate that 1.4 billion people, or one quarter of the population of the developing world, lived below our international line of $1.25 a day in 2005 prices; 25 years earlier there were 1.9 billion poor, or one half of the population.

Key Findings (PDF - 95K, 5 pages)
Source:
Poverty and Inequality
[ Policy Research Working Papers ]

World Bank Updates Poverty Estimates for the Developing World
Article
August 26, 2008
* World Bank poverty estimates strengthened by better cost-of-living data
* 400 million more people live in poverty than earlier thought
* Developing world still on track to halve poverty from its 1990 levels by 2015
* Wide regional differences seen in poverty reduction trends

Related links:

World Bank Counts More Poor People
New Figure Represents Change in Methods, Not in Fortunes
August 27, 2008
Source:
Washington Post

Web Guides - Excellent collection of links!
- Web Guide: Regional Information - Almost a hundred links to websites and organizations around the world - including Canada - where you can obtain information about poverty issues.
- Web Guide: Non-Governmental Organizations - Links to over 50 international organizations working with the poor
- Web Guide: Inequality
- Web Guide: Safety Nets
- Web Guide: Social Capital

Living Standards Measurement Study
LSMS household surveys have become an important tool in measuring and understanding poverty in developing countries.
The Living Standards Measurement Study was established by the World Bank in 1980 to explore ways of improving the type and quality of household data collected by government statistical offices in developing countries. The objectives of the LSMS were to develop new methods for monitoring progress in raising levels of living, to identify the consequences for households of current and proposed government policies, and to improve communications between survey statisticians, analysts, and policymakers.

- Poverty, Health, Nutrition, and Population
- World Bank Poverty-focused Activities
The World Bank's Mission is to reduce poverty and improve living standards through sustainable growth and investment in people

World Development Indicators
The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank's premier annual compilation of data about development. WDI 2000 includes 800 indicators in 85 tables, organized in six sections: world view, people, environment, economy, states and markets, and global links. The tables cover 148 economies and 15 country groups—with basic indicators for a further 58 economies.

Poverty Drops Below 1 Billion, says World Bank
Press Release
WASHINGTON, April 15, 2007 — Global poverty rates continued to fall in the first four years of the 21st century according to new estimates published in the World Development Indicators 2007, released today. The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day fell to 18.4 percent in 2004, leaving an estimated 985 million people living in extreme poverty.

World Development Report 2007 ($)
World Development Indicators publication is the World Bank's premier annual compilation of data about development. The 2007 WDI includes more than 900 indicators in over 80 tables organized in 6 sections: World View, People, Environment, Economy, States and Markets, and Global Links

Source:
The World Bank

Can social exclusion provide a new framework for measuring poverty? (PDF file - 355K, 20 pages) - Australia
October 2003
Social Policy Research Centre (Sydney)
"This paper examines how the concept of social exclusion has evolved in the academic and policy debate in Australia in the last five years or so. It does not attempt to do this comprehensively, but illustrates some of the most important developments, in the process reflecting on some of the issues raised in earlier Australian contribution to the social exclusion literature. The paper is organised around three principal themes : concepts; measurement; and policy."
Source:
Social Policy Research Centre - an independent research centre of the University of New South Wales

Child Poverty: A Review (PDF file - 503K, 81 pages) - Australia
November 2003
This review of child poverty measurement in Australia is written from an economist's perspective, and it contains some valuable information about how Australia defines child poverty,
the policy concerns, the measurement of child poverty, the causes of child poverty and policy strategies that can be used to combat it.
- includes some international comparisons of child poverty measures and actual numbers (including Canada).
Source:
Social Policy Research Centre
The SPRC conducts research and fosters discussion on all aspects of social policy in Australia
[ University of New South Wales ]
Sydney, Australia

Towards a credible poverty framework : From income poverty to deprivation (PDF file - 235K, 23 pages)
Australia
January 2004
SPRC discussion paper, n° 131
"There have always been differences of view on what poverty means in conceptual terms, and even greater differences on how to measure it. These differences span a broad spectrum of normative and ideological positions and raise a number of technical issues surrounding the statistical measurement of poverty. This paper explains the role of poverty research and the value of a poverty line, while acknowledging that limitations exist with the current instruments. It argues that any poverty measure must include two key ingredients of poverty – the idea that resources are inadequate to meet basic needs and the notion that needs can only be defined relative to prevailing community attitudes and standards."
Source:
Social Policy Research Centre (Sydney, Australia)
SPRC Discussion Papers - links to 60+ discussion papers online

-----------------------------------

Proceedings of the 7th Australian Conference on Quality of Life
Posted October 24, 2006
Australian Centre on Quality of Life
The refereed papers from this international conference held at Deakin University in November 2005 are now online. Papers include Robert Cummins on 'The wellbeing of caregivers', and Peter Kriel on 'Quality of work life and business ethics'.
Posted 24-10-2006

The wellbeing of Australians: 15th Australian Unity wellbeing index
Posted October 24, 2006
Australian Centre on Quality of Life

Luxembourg Income Study
The Luxembourg Income Study is an ongoing cooperative research project (started in 1983) with a membership that includes 25 countries on four continents: Europe, America, Asia and Oceania.

Rethinking the Measures of Poverty (PDF file - 283K, 30 pages)
by Seppo Sallila, Heikki Hiilamo, and Reijo Sund
Working Paper No. 368.
February 2004
“This study attempts to introduce a new method to measure relative income poverty. The aim is to find a solution which will combine information both on the depth of poverty and the quantity of the poor, i.e. the number of people living in poverty. Furthermore, a yardstick is sought which would be relatively simple and easy to understand, as these properties would facilitate the use of the new method in sociological poverty research and political decision making. The paper begins by discussing the most common problems in measuring social exclusion and relative income poverty. The following sections focus on poverty alleviation policies and poverty measurement practices, as well as on different poverty indices and the properties of an ideal poverty measure. Next, our innovation is presented, the cumulative poverty index (CUPI), together with a section discussing the estimations of the new index. The properties of the CUPI are analysed by comparing it to a number of commonly used poverty and inequality measures. Before introducing conclusions, poverty trends are compared and simulations calculated to test the CUPI against the most common relative income poverty measures.”
Source:
Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Working Papers Number 351-384
Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)

Cool and Useful Links to sites about income studies from the Luxembourg Income Study website

Child Poverty Across Industrialized Nations (1999) - (PDF File, 468K - 90 pages)
BRUCE BRADBURY and MARKUS JÄNTTI (Innocenti Occasional Papers, Economic and Social Policy Studies, no. 71. Florence: UNICEF International Child Development Centre)
Estimates of patterns of child income poverty in 25 nations using data from the Luxembourg Income Study.
Includes Canada.
Released in 1999, but most statistical tables and charts date back to 1995 and 1996.
Incl. : The Measurement of Child Poverty - Income, consumption and saving - The poverty threshold and counting methods - Child Income Poverty across Nations - Three measures of child poverty - Trend - Lone parenthood and child poverty - Children compared to the Elderly - Social Transfers, Market Incomes and Child Poverty - Welfare effort - and more...

For links to poverty measures in Canada,
go to the Canadian Social Research Links Canadian Poverty Measures page

For links to social program statistics for Canada and other countries,
go to the Canadian Social Research Links Social Statistics page

For info on asset-based approaches to social policy,
see the Canadian Social Research Links Asset-Based Social Policies Links page

Search the Web Search Canadian Social Research Links Only

TIP: How to Search for a Word or Expression on a Single Web Page  Open any web page in your browser, then hold down the Control ("Ctrl") key on your keyboard and type the letter F to open a "Find" window. Type or paste in a key word or expression and hit Enter - your browser will go directly to the first occurrence of that word (or those exact words, as the case may be). To continue searching using the same keyword(s) throughout the rest of the page, keep clicking on the FIND NEXT button. Try it. It's a great time-saver!

E-MAIL: gilseg@rogers.com