Comparing Eight Approaches to Poverty Measurement in Terms of Their Relevance to Wellbeing & Material Hardship

• In Event: Poverty Measurement: New Advances, Insights and Policy Implications

Abstract

A variety of poverty measures are used across the social sciences, government, and media. The choice of poverty measure has consequences for how we understand the prevalence and characteristics of poverty in the U.S., as well as our understandings of disparities associated with poverty. Following decades of social science research, we know that economic poverty is strongly associated with wellbeing and material hardship. In this paper I compare eight poverty measures to seven measures of wellbeing and material hardship. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1984-2019) with income measured using the Cross-National Equivalent File, I examine within-person, within-age, and within-cohort variation via three-way fixed effects. I compare the predictive ability of these measures in pairwise matchups. Measures are assessed over almost 200 regressions and via an Elo ranking system. I find that wealth poverty often outperforms income poverty measures in predicting wellbeing. The SPM and relative poverty measures are also generally stronger predictors than the OPM and consumption measures.

 

Author

• Kathryn Kay O'Neill, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author