COHABITATION AND THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILD POVERTY

Marcia Carlson and Sheldon Danziger

Review of Income and Wealth, 1999, vol. 45, issue 2, 179-191

Abstract: We use 1990 U.S. Census of Population data to calculate what poverty rates would have been if cohabitors were treated in the same manner as married couples. We find that the official treatment of cohabiting partners as separate family units overstated the extent of poverty in 1989 among all children by about three percent. Only about 11 percent of the observed rise in child poverty between 1969 and 1989 would be eliminated if the Census Bureau made this change in its definition of the family. We estimate a logistic regression model of the likelihood that poor, cohabiting families with children would be reclassified as non‐poor if the cohabitor's income were included in family income.

Date: 1999
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