Measures of Material Hardship

摘要

Researchers have increasingly used measures of material hardship to examine the well-being of low-income families, especially in the context of welfare reform. These measures employ direct indicators of consumption and physical living conditions to examine whether families meet certain basic needs. In many cases, material hardship measures have been used to supplement more traditional income-based poverty measures, such as household income and the federal poverty level. However, researchers and policymakers interested in material hardship face methodological challenges in developing and using hardship measures and neither a commonly accepted definition nor a standard approach to its measurement has emerged. In light of increased interest in material hardship measurement, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) developed a project to advance the study of material hardship.