The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will convene an expert consensus panel to evaluate the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) and recommend improvements to the measure. The intent of the panel is to assist the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to ensure that the SPM is fulfilling its mandate to provide information on aggregate levels of economic need that informs public understanding of economic conditions and trends affecting people with lower incomes. After reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the SPM in its current form, the panel will consider modifications that would increase its value to policy makers and researchers for the uses to which it is, or potentially could be, applied.
The panel will focus its attention on factors affecting economic wellbeing for which conceptual and measurement questions have proven most difficult to resolve. Factors that the panel may review in this regard include, but are not limited to: medical care, child and other dependent care, housing/shelter, taxes, non-health and non-housing in-kind transfers, and assets/debts. Such factors present challenges in establishing what constitutes people’s “basic needs” and in determining the resources on hand to meet those needs. The panel will also review methods for adjusting poverty thresholds (e.g., for family size, price changes, or geographic variation in cost of living), survey quality issues, and the potential role of alternative data sources for poverty measurement purposes.
The panel will note instances where its recommendations for improving the SPM are consistent with or, if such cases arise, diverge from guidance proposed by other expert groups. The panel may also evaluate the process whereby the SPM is periodically updated to incorporate methodological advances or improvements in source data.
At the conclusion of the 24-month study, the panel will issue a consensus report with conclusions and recommendations. The focus of the report will be on changes that may be considered for revision cycles beyond 2021, after recommendations issued by the SPM Interagency Technical Working Group are expected to have been implemented (although the panel may comment on those changes in terms of their usefulness going forward).