The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2016

In 2016, the overall SPM rate was 13.9 percent. This was 0.6 percentage points lower than the 2015 SPM rate of 14.5 (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

SPM rates were down for children under age 18 and adults aged 18 to 64. SPM rates for individuals aged 65 and older were up, from 13.7 percent in 2015 to 14.5 percent in 2016 (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

The SPM rate for 2016 was 1.2 percentage points higher than the official poverty rate of 12.7 percent (Figure 3).

The percentage of individuals aged 65 and older with SPM resources below half their SPM threshold increased from 4.5 percent in 2015 to 5.2 percent in 2016 (Figure 6 and Appendix Table A-4).

There were 13 states plus the District of Columbia for which SPM rates were higher than official poverty rates, 20 states with lower rates, and 17 states for which the differences were not statistically significant (Figure 7).

Social Security continued to be the most important anti-poverty program, moving 26.1 million individuals out of poverty. Refundable tax credits moved 8.2 million people out of poverty (Figure 8).

Reference Information

Author: 

Liana Fox
Publisher: 
U.S. Census Bureau
Publication Date: 
September 2017