Income Poverty and Multiple Deprivations in a High-Income Country: The Case of the United States
Abstract
This paper develops a measure of the joint distribution of multiple deprivations in the United States, in other words a measure of the extent to which different deprivations are experienced by the same individual. Using Current Population Survey and American Community Survey data, we find that the experience of multiple deprivations affects 15 percent of Americans. We also find that income poverty is not a reliable proxy to measure multiple deprivations: 5.5% of the population, an estimated 17.1 million Americans, experience multiple deprivations while they are not income poor. The odds of experiencing multiple deprivations are two to three times higher for Hispanics, immigrants and persons with disabilities. Further measurement efforts are needed on overlapping multiple deprivations in the US as such measures can be used in policy evaluation and monitoring.
Department
Institute on Disability
Publication Date
8-1-2015
Journal Title
SSRN
Publisher
Department of Economics, Fordham University
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Mitra, Sophie and Brucker, Debra, Income Poverty and Multiple Deprivations in a High-Income Country: The Case of the United States (August 1, 2015). Fordham University Department of Economics, Discussion Paper No: 2014-05. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2445543