This paper presents information on poverty in the United States based on information collected in the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The data presented in this report cover the period of January 2001 through December 2003.

Looking at the set of measures available from this longitudinal survey gives a more nuanced picture of poverty than annual statistics like those in official poverty calculated from the CPS ASEC. For people 65 and over, average monthly poverty rates and episodic poverty rates were lower than the younger age groups. During the same period from 2001 to 2003, for people 65 and over, chronic poverty was higher than people 18 to 64 and not statistically different from chronic poverty among children under 18 and the duration of poverty spells is longer than the younger age groups.