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SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 13 RECOMMENDATION 5.6. The Bureau of Labor Statistics should undertake a comprehensive review of the Consumer Expenditure Survey to assess the costs and benefits of changes to the survey design, questionnaire, sample size, and other features that could improve the quality and usefulness of the data. The review should consider ways to improve the CEX for the purpose of developing poverty thresholds, for making it possible at a future date to measure poverty on the basis of a consumption or expenditure concept of family resources, and for other analytic purposes related to the measurement of consumption, income, and savings. OTHER ISSUES IN POVERTY MEASUREMENT RECOMMENDATION 6.1. The official poverty measure should continue to be derived on an annual basis. Appropriate agencies should develop poverty measures for periods that are shorter and longer than a year, with data from SIPP and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for such purposes as program evaluation. Such measures may require the inclusion of asset values in the family resource definition. RECOMMENDATION 6.2. The official measure of poverty should continue to use families and unrelated individuals as the units of analysis for which thresholds are defined and resources aggregated. The definition of "family" should be broadened for purposes of poverty measurement to include cohabiting couples. RECOMMENDATION 6.3. Appropriate agencies should conduct research on the extent of resource sharing among roommates and other household and family members to determine if the definition of the unit of analysis for the poverty measure should be modified in the future. RECOMMENDATION 6.4. In addition to the basic poverty counts and ratios for the total population and groupsâthe number and proportion of poor peopleâthe official poverty series should provide statistics on the average income and distribution of income for the poor. The count and other statistics should also be published for poverty measures in which family resources are defined net of government taxes and transfers, such as a measure that defines income in before-tax terms, a measure that excludes means-tested government benefits from income, and a measure that excludes all government benefits from income. Such measures can help assess the effects of government taxes and transfers on poverty.
