The U.S. Census Bureau recently released two annual reports on income and poverty. The first report, entitled “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2016,” presents data on income, earnings, income inequality, and poverty in the United States based on information collected in the 2017 and earlier Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Here are the report’s highlights:
Income:
Earnings:
Income Inequality:
Poverty:
The second report, the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), addresses the shortcomings of the official poverty measure, which excludes non-cash government benefits from household income. The SPM takes into account non-cash benefits for low-income households like housing subsidies, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the National School Lunch Program, the Supplementary Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). The SPM also subtracts necessary expenses from household income, like child-care, medical, and work-related expenses.
The SPM shows that housing subsidies lift 3.1 million Americans out of poverty. They reduced the supplemental poverty rate by 1.4 percentage points for children under 18, 1.3 percentage points for seniors at least 65 years old, and 0.7 percentage points for adults between the ages of 18 and 64.