The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) released by the U.S. Census Bureau today (November 6, 2013) shows that the poverty rate for all persons was 16.0 percent in 2012, virtually the same as in 2011, 16.1 percent. A key finding in today’s Census release is that millions of people would have been poor in 2012 in the absence of our safety net programs. For example, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) raised about 5 million people above the poverty line; the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other refundable tax credits raised more than 9 million people above the poverty line.

The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is important because, unlike the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) which counts only money income (e.g., wages and cash transfers from the government), the SPM also includes non-cash government benefits such as SNAP, the school lunch program, housing subsidies and the EITC. These noncash benefits have grown more rapidly than cash benefits in recent decades.

Critics of federal antipoverty programs often claim that they are ineffective. But much recent research shows that progress in reducing poverty has been understated because the OPM does not count noncash benefits (see Bailey and Danziger, Legacies of the War on Poverty, Russell Sage Foundation, 2013). If the OPM counted all benefits as income as the SPM does, poverty would have fallen by over a third since 1965. That is, the safety net is much more effective than critics claim.

The primary reason that poverty remains so high is that the benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers as they were in the quarter century following the end of World War II. We have more working poverty today than we did 40 years ago, when the inflation-adjusted minimum wage was higher and even less-educated workers benefited when productivity increased. Stagnant earnings for the typical worker and higher unemployment represent a failure of the economy, not a failure of antipoverty policies.

Given current economic conditions, poverty will not be substantially reduced unless government does more to help the working poor and those who are willing to work but cannot find jobs. We must find ways to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are more widely distributed than they have been over recent decades. The best way to do this is to adopt policies to increase the employment and earnings of the poor. But even with such a renewed focus on raising the market incomes of the poor, we must also expand the reach of our safety net programs.

Poverty remains high, not because of a shortage of effective antipoverty policy options, but because the public and policy makers have not made reducing poverty a high priority.