Comparing Poverty Measures: Development of the Supplemental Poverty Measure and Differences with the Official Poverty Measure

There has been continued debate about the best way to measure poverty in the United States since the first official U.S. poverty statistics were published in the mid-1960s. The U.S. Census Bureau releases two poverty measures each September. The first, called the official poverty measure, is based on cash resources. The second, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), includes both cash and noncash benefits and subtracts necessary expenses (such as taxes and medical expenses). The official poverty measure has remained mostly unchanged since it was introduced in the mid-1960s. In contrast, the SPM was designed to improve as new data and methods become available. This blog discusses the development of the SPM and differences between the two measures.