On Oct 8, 2007, at 6:12 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
Where can I find statistics since 1959 (or so) on the percentage of US families which earn less that (say) 1/2 of the median family income? I'm trying to get a time-series measuring a "relative" measure of poverty to compare to the official measure (basically an "absolute" measure of poverty).
A guy named Jack O'Neil, a Census Bureau analyst, used to compute such a relative defintion of poverty on his own. He's either retired or died; the last estimate I have from his series was for 1998. Here's what I have from his series (the second column is the relative poverty rate, i.e., less than half the median; the third is the ratio of that rate to the official rate). The Luxembourg Income Study uses a relative defintion of poverty - they don't do it annually, but at frequent enough intervals to give you the trend. For that, see: <http://www.lisproject.org/keyfigures/full_kf.xls>. Relative poverty rate and ratio to official poverty rate source: Jack O'Neil, Census Bureau (unpublished data) 1969 18.0% 148.8% 1970 18.1% 143.7% 1971 18.3% 146.4% 1972 18.9% 158.8% 1973 18.9% 170.3% 1974 18.7% 167.0% 1975 19.6% 159.3% 1976 19.3% 163.6% 1977 19.8% 170.7% 1978 19.6% 171.9% 1979 20.1% 171.8% 1980 20.3% 156.2% 1981 20.9% 149.3% 1982 21.4% 142.7% 1983 22.0% 144.7% 1984 21.8% 151.4% 1985 21.7% 155.0% 1986 21.8% 160.3% 1987 22.1% 164.9% 1988 22.0% 169.2% 1989 22.1% 172.7% 1990 21.8% 161.5% 1991 22.3% 157.0% 1992 22.8% 154.1% 1993 22.8% 151.0% 1994 22.6% 155.9% 1995 22.2% 160.9% 1996 22.3% 162.8% 1997 22.3% 167.7% 1998 22.3% 175.5%
