Measuring Poverty in the United States: History and Current Issues

Daniel Weinberg

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Formal measurement of poverty in the United States is now about 40 years old. This paper first briefly describes the origins and basis of the official poverty thresholds adopted by the federal government in the late 1960s. Then, it discusses in some detail some of the more current issues that observers suggest must be addressed if changes are to be made. The final sections discuss recent efforts to propose alternates to the current official approach.

Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2006-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2006/CES-WP-06-11.pdf First version, 2006 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:06-11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().