Supplemental Poverty Measure

The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is an alternative measure of income poverty in the United States that has been produced by the U.S. Census Bureau since 2011, in collaboration with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The Census Bureau produces the SPM as a research measure, meaning that it is intended to supplement, rather than replace the official poverty measure (OPM). The initial release of the SPM, issued in November [Page 1485]2011 by the Census Bureau’s Kathleen Short, provided SPM estimates for 2009 and 2010. Since then, the Census Bureau has released estimates for 2011 and 2012, in the fall of 2012 and 2013, respectively. The SPM is the product of decades of research, debate, and exchange among poverty measurement scholars. According to the Census ...