Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Good News, Everybody! Poverty Edition

From the August 2009, NBER Digest: Poverty rates have been declining faster than suggested by income data.

2 comments:

Matt E. Ryan said...

The idea of a consumption-based poverty measure seems lengths better than an income-based one. Poverty itself is subjective, and you can't get away from that, but for what it's worth consumption seems a better measure of what people are trying to get after.

Justin M Ross said...

Much agreed. Consumption smoothing and unreported earned income make the income based poverty measures far too untrustworthy.