Improving How Poverty is Measured: A Recommendation to Better Reflect Households' Basic Needs and Resources took place at Baruch College on September 28.
This event was jointly sponsored by the Marxe School, NYU Wagner, and Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy of the Columbia University School of Social Work. Members of a panel of the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies of Science, Technology and Engineering presented the recommendations of "An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line", a new report on revising the US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). The SPM is considered a more reliable and inclusive measure of poverty than the nation’s Official Poverty Measure. Nonetheless, it has limitations such as excluding consideration of health insurance, some of the largest and most important benefits for lower-income households. The report recommends, among other changes, that the SPM be revised to incorporate health care and insurance, following the methods developed by Professors Sanders Korenman and Dahlia Remler.
The event began with a welcome from Marxe Dean Sherry Ryan, followed by a presentation of recommendations by five members of the Panel on Evaluation and Improvements to the SPM that wrote the report, including Professor Sanders Korenman of the Marxe School; Ingrid Gould Ellen of NYU; David Johnson of the National Academies; Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University; and James P. Ziliak of the University of Kentucky who chaired the National Academies panel that wrote the report.
Following the presentation, Sherry Glied, Dean of NYU Wagner, moderated an expert panel discussion that reacted to the report, assisted by Ajay Chaudry of NYU. Expert panelists included: Dahlia K. Remler of the Marxe School; Carolyn Barnes of University of Chicago; Sheldon Danziger, President of the Russell Sage Foundation; Christine D'Onofrio, of the NYC Office of Economic Opportunity; Liana E. Fox, Assistant Division Chief at the U.S. Census Bureau; and Christopher Wimer of Columbia University.
You can find many of Professor Remler and Korenman’s papers on the Health Inclusive Poverty Measure, many co-othered with Dr. Rosemary Hyson, as well as a link to the new National Academies Report here.
Watch a video from the event
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