Measuring Poverty: Do the Proposed Revisions of the Poverty Measure Matter forRural America

摘要

Proposed changes in poverty measurement methods would lower the nonmetro povertyrate by 3 percentage points and raise the metro poverty rate by 1 percentage point. The resulting nonmetro poverty rate would be lower than the metro rate, reversing the historic rural poverty gap. Measured poverty would decline by 4 percentage points in the nonmetro South and by more than 10 percentage points for nonmetro blacks. The adjustment for cost of housing accounts for most of the metro-nonmetro difference between the current and proposed measures.