On November 17 the Foundation officially launched a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. The inaugural double issue, edited by sociologist Matthew Desmond (Harvard University), focuses on families experiencing "severe deprivation," or acute, compounded, and persistent economic hardship. In the two issues, poverty scholars from multiple disciplines examine how the Great Recession, plus factors such as rising housing costs, welfare reform, mass incarceration, suppressed wages, and pervasive joblessness have contributed to deepening poverty in America.
Journalist Eduardo Porter cited research from RSF in an article for the New York Times on Americans living in deep poverty—or those whose incomes are more than 50% below the poverty line. Porter notes, “What’s perhaps most surprising is how the apparatus of government assistance has turned its back on these people, not just failing to offer new strategies to help overcome the deepest deprivation but even removing critical programs that used to keep many of them afloat.” As Liana Fox and colleagues find in their RSF article, governmental transfers reduce the risk of deep poverty, but the shift over the last few decades from cash assistance to in-kind nutrition assistance and tax refunds for the poor has tended to benefit those who are employed, rather than the deep poor who are likely to experience long stretches of unemployment.
This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.
This fall, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the official national poverty rate as 14.8%, a number virtually unchanged from the year prior. Many poverty scholars, including RSF president Sheldon Danziger, have long debated the accuracy of this official measure, pointing out that it does not take into account non-cash benefits such as food stamps and housing subsidies, and therefore fails to reflect the importance of the social safety net for low-income families.
Current RSF Visiting Scholar James Ziliak (University of Kentucky) has identified yet another factor that affects the Census Bureau’s official poverty measure, which is calculated based on responses to earnings questions on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC). In his ongoing research, Ziliak has observed a non-response rate to ASEC earnings questions of over 30%. These missing figures present a significant obstacle to our understanding of poverty and inequality—if, for example, a significant percentage of ASEC non-respondents are low-income, the national poverty rate would be much higher than the Census Bureau’s current estimate.
While the Census has in place a process for accounting for ASEC non-responses, Ziliak has also identified shortcomings with their approach. To obtain more accurate income data for non-respondents, Ziliak instead links the Current Population Survey to tax records. In a new interview with the Foundation, Ziliak discussed his work and its ramifications for the way we measure and understand poverty.
Q. Your research at the Foundation examines the rise of non-responses to earnings questions in the Current Population Survey and its effect on our understanding of poverty in the US. How does the Census Bureau currently account for non-respondents? What are the shortcomings of their approach?