Suchergebnisse

Abstract
A recent National Academy of Sciences report recommends elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to the "nation's headline poverty statistic." I project how making the SPM the official poverty measure would affect eligibility for government assistance programs whose eligibility thresholds are tied to the official poverty line. Making the SPM the official poverty measure would increase the poverty line for a family of four by 20 percent in 2024. The eligibility threshold for a family of four would consequentially increase by $8320 for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $8512 for Medicaid adults, and by larger amounts for Medicare Part D Low Income Subsidies, the National School Lunch Program, and Affordable Care Act premium subsidies (once temporarily relaxed eligibility rules are restored in 2026). Effects on eligibility thresholds would grow over time because the SPM thresholds grow faster over time than the current official thresholds. As a result of the higher eligibility thresholds, I estimate that in 2024 SNAP would cover 2.0 million additional households with spending rising by $2.6 billion, and that Medicaid would cover 1.3 million additional recipients with spending rising by $5.6 billion.

We provide the first survey-based look at levels and trends in income and its distribution from 1959 to 2016 by linking Current Population Survey data from 1967 through 2016 with decennial Census data for 1959. We find that the dramatic decline in the market income of the middle class (measured as the median American tax unit or the mean value of the middle quintile of American tax units) began in 1969. However, we find that this decline was more than offset by government tax and transfer programs – especially in-kind transfers. Conventional measures of median income and income inequality that exclude the market value of in-kind transfers will substantially understate the impact of government policies in offsetting the stagnation of median market income growth and the rise in market income inequality since 1969.