Since the publication of the first official U.S. poverty estimates, researchers and policymakers have continued to discuss the best approach to measure income and poverty in the United States. Beginning in 2011, the Census Bureau began publishing the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which extends the official poverty measure by taking account of many of the government programs designed to assist low-income families and individuals that are not included in the official poverty measure. This is the seventh report describing the SPM, released by the U.S. Census Bureau, with support from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This report presents updated estimates of the prevalence of poverty in the United States using the official measure and the SPM based on information collected in 2017 and earlier Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC).
The U.S. Census Bureau identified an error in the input of SPM thresholds for renters used in the 2016 SPM data products. The base threshold should have been $26,104 and was erroneously entered as $26,014. This error affected the SPM poverty status for 109 unweighted observations. As a result, the overall SPM poverty rate was understated by 0.06 percentage points—13.91 in published tables compared to 13.97 percent. Corrected tables, research files, and a revised report have all been reissued.
This Erratum Table provides a comparison of the revised SPM 2016 estimates to the previously published SPM 2016 estimates for all groups included in Table A-1 of the report.
Family Income Up 8 Percent Since 1955 (Advance data)
Number of families by family income and distribution of families and unrelated individuals by total money income, United States, urban and rural, 1952 to 1956.
Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016
This report presents data on health insurance coverage in the United States based on information collected in the 2016 CPS ASEC.
Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2015
This report focuses on the child support income that custodial parents reported receiving from noncustodial parents living elsewhere and other types of support.