New Estimates of Poverty from the Comprehensive Income Data Set

• Activity Number: 106 - Administrative Income Data, Survey Data and Inequality
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Monday, July 29, 2019 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Business and Economic Statistics Section
• Author(s): Bruce D Meyer* and Derek Wu
• Companies: University of Chicago and University of Chicago
• Keywords: Income ; Poverty; Inequality; Administrative data; Linked data; Misreporting

Abstract

We provide new estimates of poverty in the United States using a groundbreaking set of linked survey and administrative data from the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID) project. The administrative data cover earnings and asset income from IRS tax records and transfer income for safety net programs including Social Security, SSI, SNAP, Public Assistance, housing assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance and Veterans' Benefits. We link these data to the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics. Previous research shows that the CPS misses half of SNAP benefits, private pensions, and Public Assistance dollars and a third of unemployment insurance dollars – among other income sources (Meyer, Mok, Sullivan 2015; Bee and Mitchell 2017). Using the linked data, we provide new estimates of poverty, showing how improved definitions and better income measures change past estimates.