Historical Poverty Trends & Measurement

Since 2009, the US Census Bureau has released the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) alongside the official poverty measure to better capture the impact of taxes and transfers and social policy changes. With funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and The JPB Foundation (now the Freedom Together Foundation), the Center on Policy and Social Policy created a historical version of the US Census Bureau Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). The SPM improves upon official poverty statistics by taking a fuller accounting of the resources that families have at their disposal and is a useful tool for analyzing the effects of social policies on the lives of low-income families. The historical SPM dataset makes SPM poverty rates available back to 1967, the first year the official poverty measure began, to enable tracking of poverty trends and the impact of policy changes over time.

Our historical Supplemental Poverty Measure data is available for public use on IPUMS. Information on how to access it can be found on our historical SPM data page. The data set extends back to 1967, like the official poverty measure, to provide a consistent measure to assess the impacts of anti-poverty policies over time.