Alternative Poverty Measures

GGD-96-183R: Published: Sep 10, 1996. Publicly Released: Sep 10, 1996.

Additional Materials:

Contact:

Office of Public Affairs
(202) 512-4800
youngc1@gao.gov

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Slesnick consumption measure, an alternative to the official U.S. government measure of poverty, focusing on: (1) how the Slesnick measure differs from the official measure; (2) the methodology used to test the alternative measure; and (3) the sources of data used in that methodology. GAO noted that: (1) because of inadequate data household consumption, the Slesnick measure used three different data sources to develop a consumption-based measure of poverty; (2) the Slesnick measure yielded a poverty rate of 8.4 percent in 1989, while the official measure of poverty yielded a 12.8-percent rate in 1989; (3) the Slesnick and the official measures of poverty differed regarding the dollar amounts of threshholds, measures of economic well-being, and the use of equivalence scales, cost-of-living indexes, and population data for grouping households; (4) a per capita ratio of expenditures from Personal Consumption Expenditures and Consumer Expenditure Survey data sources was used to test the sensitivity of the Slesnick measure to differences in data sources; (5) the consumption-based measure of poverty generally produced a lower rate than the official poverty measure; and (6) the use of different sources of consumption data affected the size of the differences between the Slesnick and official poverty measures.

Nov 16, 2020

Nov 10, 2020

Nov 9, 2020

Nov 6, 2020

Oct 13, 2020

Sep 30, 2020

Sep 9, 2020

Looking for more? Browse all our products here