TY  - JOUR
AU  - Meyer,Bruce D.
AU  - Sullivan,James X.
TI  - Further Results on Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13413
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13413
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13413.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Bruce D. Meyer
Harris School of Public Policy
University of Chicago
1155 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-2712
Fax: 773/702-0926
E-Mail: bdmeyer@uchicago.edu

James X. Sullivan
Department of Economics
447 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Tel: 574/631-7587
E-Mail: James.X.Sullivan.197@nd.edu
AB  - In the U.S., analyses of poverty rates and the effects of anti-poverty programs rely almost exclusively on income data.  In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data to measure the well-being of the poor, and, on balance, data quality issues favor consumption in the case of single mothers. Our earlier work did not show that income and consumption differ in practice.  Here we further examine data quality issues and show that important conclusions about recent trends depend on whether one uses consumption or income.  Changes in the distribution of resources for single mothers differ sharply in recent years depending on whether measured by income or consumption.  Measures of overall and sub-group poverty also sharply differ.  In addition to examining broader populations and a longer time period, we also consider new dimensions of data quality such as survey and item nonresponse, imputation, and precision.  Finally, we demonstrate the flaws in a recent paper that compares income and consumption data.
ER  -