Historical series combining the official estimates of the Supplemental Poverty Measure produced by the Census Bureau for years 2009 and later with estimates for earlier years produced by researchers from the Columbia Population Research Center, using a methodology similar to that used by the Census Bureau.
Fox et al. (2013). Data provided by the authors to the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is a poverty rate whose computation takes into account taxes, transfers, and other factors not reflected in the Official Poverty Rate. The SPM has been computed by the U.S. Census Bureau starting in 2009; much of the data needed to produce it is not available for earlier years. Researchers from the Columbia Population Research Center (CPRC) used data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (March CPS) and the Consumer Expenditure Survey to produce estimates of the SPM for years prior to 2009. They used a methodology similar to that used by the Census in producing their official SPM estimates, but with adjustments to account for differences in the data available in earlier years.
See also Supplemental Poverty Measure – Anchored, which also provides estimates of the SPM that go back further in time than the Census Bureau’s official estimates, but is produced using a different approach.
For more information on the historical and anchored supplemental poverty measures, see the following CPRC working papers: