Distribution Sensitive Measures of Poverty in the United States

John Bishop, John Formby and Buhong Zheng

Review of Social Economy, 1999, vol. 57, issue 3, 306-343

Abstract: This paper develops and applies new measures of poverty that overcome a number of specific methodological flaws in the official US poverty statistics. Sen's distribution sensitive index of poverty and each of its components are estimated at several distinct poverty thresholds for the period 1961-1996. Distribution sensitive measures of urban poverty are corrected for interarea differences in the cost of living and for comprehensive incomes. Recently developed statistical inference procedures are applied. Official poverty statistics are shown to be seriously misleading in some time periods and the choice of a poverty line affects conclusions concerning changes in poverty.

Keywords: poverty; distribution sensitive; time series; urban areas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1080/00346769900000005

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