This paper uses data from the SIPP to examine short spells of low income, and considers the characteristics of those who tend to exit from poverty relatively rapidly, as compared to thow who remain for longer periods. Unfortunately, we were not able to construct an analysis file for this study using the full SIPP panel; the final few waves of the 1984 panel have not been available for very long, and we have not yet been able to integrate them into our longitudinal file. (Further, longitudinal weights are not yet available for the full file, and the very large reduction in sample that took place in wave 5, as weel as attrition rates of over 20 percent, complicate the analysis of this file in the absense of weights.) As a result, this paper reports on data from the first 16 months of the 1984 SIPP panel only. We hope to be able to extend the analysis presented here to the full panel in the near future.