The following HTML text is provided to enhance online
readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML.
Please use the page image
as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.
Measuring Poverty: A New Approach
TABLE 5-4 Distribution of Gross Money Income, with Amounts Deducted for Out-of-Pocket Medical Care Expenditures, Child Care Expenses, and Other Work-Related Expenses, 1992, in Dollars
b Average of imputed out-of-pocket medical care expenses (including health insurance premiums), child care expenses, and work-related expenses for families with gross money income 2.5 percentiles below to 2.5 percentiles above each percentile value (e.g., deductions for families at the 10th percentile are averaged over families with gross money income between the 7.5 and 12.5 percentiles).
The proposed measure moves 7.4 million people out of poverty, and it moves about 7.4 million people into poverty. (A total of 29.5 million people, 80% of the poverty population, are poor under both measures.) Most of the movement occurs near the poverty line. Thus, 87 percent of the 7.4 million people who are no longer categorized as poor move from the category of income between 50 and 100 percent of the poverty line to the category of income between 100 and 150 percent of the poverty line. Similarly, 79 percent of the 7.4 million people who are newly categorized as poor move from the category of income between 100 and 150 percent of the poverty line to the category of income between 50 and 100 percent of the poverty line; see Table 5-5.
Table 5-6 shows the effect of the proposed poverty measure on the composition of the poor population. By age, somewhat more poor people are adults aged 18-64 and somewhat fewer poor people are adults aged 65 and older under the proposed measure in comparison with the current measure, while the proportion of children under age 18 among the poverty population is about the same under both measures. By race, somewhat more poor people
