Transcript
RON HASKINS: So what the Census Bureau has done this year is they have published the Current Population Survey numbers, the official numbers, just as they have in the past—actually, a little different, and I'll mention that in just a moment—and they have just included a few tables in their release. I don't think they talked about it in their presentation this morning, but there were a few tables from the American Community Survey. These are very different surveys. But everything we're talking about today is the Current Population Survey, and that is the survey that the Census Bureau poverty, income, and health insurance numbers have been based on year after year after year. So I just wanted to clarify that point.
Then I also want to clarify that this year, for reasons that I don't really understand—maybe one of our panelists knows about this—but normally, as many of you know, there's been a lot of debate about the poverty number itself. And many people think that the poverty number is a very inadequate measure of poverty and that there are just so many criticisms of the poverty number. For example, many Republicans point out that it doesn't include lots of benefits, like food stamps. It also doesn't include income from the earned income tax credit, because that's given through the tax code and the tax code numbers are not included. Other people point out that families have to work to make money and if they pay five or six or four thousand dollars a year for child care, that's not reflected in the poverty numbers.
So the Census Bureau very wisely developed a whole series of alternative poverty measures that are very, very useful, and I'll show you what some of them look like in just a minute. But this year they have not published those, so they're not in this report as they have been in the past. But it's my understanding that they will be released later. So all of you who crave these additional poverty measures and who like it if they have 20 different measures of poverty rather than one, your wish will be fulfilled some months into the future. I'm not exactly sure when.
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