Poverty & Income Dynamics

This brief, part of a series on disconnected low-income men, examines their health insurance coverage and health status using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) with some additional information provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This report, prepared by the Urban Institute, provides a thorough review of the literature on the extent of price variation across geographic areas, an assessment of the available indices to use to adjust the poverty guidelines for geographic price variation, and trial estimates of how geographically adjusted poverty guidelines would affect program eligibility and federal and state costs.

This ASPE Issue Brief provides information on the research Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) calculated by the Census Bureau. In 2011, 16.1 percent of the U.S. population was poor using the SPM, representing 49.7 million individuals. This compares to 15.1 percent of the U.S. population, or 46.6 million individuals, under the official measure.

This report is scheduled for release in mid March. It is the final report of a project exploring evidence-based strategies for reliably identifying subgroups of low-income fathers at the outset of evaluations.