On Wednesday I put up a short post on the 2009 Census poverty estimates. I noticed that the Urban Institute has put up a feature on their own recent research related to measuring poverty, the consequences of poverty, and policies. There are many good papers. I liked the figure (below) from Austin Nichols’ paper which shows the change in unemployment going into the recession and the duration of unemployment.
There’s also a good paper by Sheila Zedlewski et al. that tests an alternative measurement of poverty (the 1995 National Academy of Sciences proposal), which includes near cash income (ex. food stamps) and other transfers and deducts out-of-pocket medical spending. It doesn’t give dramatically different estimates of the prevalence of poverty in their microsimulation, but the data from the model come from Minnesota in 2006… a generous state in a fairly good economic climate.
