Using the American Community Survey (ACS) to Implement a National Academy of Sciences (NAS)-Style Poverty Measure

• Activity Number: 556
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Trudi Renwick*+ and Mark Levitan
• Companies: U.S. Census Bureau and NYC Center for Economic Opportunity
• Keywords: poverty ; experimental poverty measures ; ACS ; non-cash resources ; inkind benefits

Abstract

Since the 1995 report of the NAS Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance on improving the poverty measure, the Census Bureau has focused its efforts on implementing the report's recommendations using the Current Population Survey. Meanwhile the Census Bureau has fully implemented the new ACS. Our paper will report on two research projects, one sponsored by the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity, another initiated by the Census Bureau, that explore how a NAS-style poverty measure can be implemented using the ACS. The paper will contrast the results of the these approaches to imputing data missing in the ACS (taxes, in-kind benefits, child care and medical expenses) and offer ideas as to how future research on imputation techniques should proceed. It will conclude with some thoughts about how the ACS questionnaire could be modified to provide more data on non-cash resources.