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The U.S. Census Bureau currently produces two poverty measures annually: the official poverty measure and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). This paper presents ongoing research on a third measure, the Health Inclusive Poverty Measure (HIPM), which adapts the SPM to incorporate values of health insurance coverage into poverty measurement. In 2022, the HIPM poverty rate was 14.0 percent, an increase of 4.6 percentage points (48 percent) from 9.5 percent the previous year. This was 1.6 percentage points higher than the Supplemental Poverty (SPM) rate of 12.4 percent and 2.5 percentage points higher than the official+ poverty rate of 11.5 percent. Medicare had the largest anti-poverty impact of all public health insurance provision programs, removing 21.7 million individuals from poverty. In addition to annual poverty estimates, the paper focuses on how an individual’s poverty status changed between the two measures. Over 97 percent of the population had the same poverty status using the SPM and HIPM in 2022. A key factor for those that switch poverty status was being uninsured. Overall, the estimates build on the previous literature (Korenman and Remler 2016; Korenman, Remler, and Hyson 2019; Creamer 2023) and provide further evidence supporting the feasibility of producing HIPM on current U.S. Census Bureau production timelines.
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