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Dear Chairman
McDermott:
On behalf of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation’s oldest, largest, and
most diverse civil and human rights coalition with nearly 200 member
organizations, we are writing in support of the Measuring American Poverty Act
of 2008, a significant effort to create a more accurate measure of poverty in America.
The current
measure, which was devised in the mid 1960s and based on data from the mid
1950s, is flawed in several ways. Notably, it fails to count public benefits
such as refundable tax credits, housing assistance, and food stamps as income.
In addition, the current measure’s assessment of a poor family’s necessary
expenses is extremely outdated. Only food costs are included in the antiquated
measure now in use; the increasing costs of housing, heat, transportation,
child care and out of pocket medical expenses are left out.
The Measuring
American Poverty Act of 2008 includes elements that are in our view essential
to modernizing the assessment of poverty. They include:
- Counting
expenditures more accurately
- Including
certain public benefits as income
- Adjusting the
calculation of poverty thresholds for regional differences in costs
- A means of
showing the anti-poverty effects of benefits programs by comparing pre-
and post-tax and transfer income
- A clear
statement that the proposed changes are not to modify eligibility or
amount of assistance for public benefits
- A provision to
periodically re-assess the validity of the revised poverty measure
There are a
number of important reasons to improve the measure of poverty. It will be critical
to be able to accurately gauge whether the steps the nation takes to reduce it
are working. A more accurate poverty measure will also give us greater
understanding of the needs of population subgroups. The current standard may
understate the hardships of the elderly in making ends meet by failing to take
into account their high out-of-pocket medical costs. A new standard may help
us to learn if poverty is more prevalent, or deeper, among certain demographic
groups (race/ethnicity, age, rural/urban residence) because they are less
likely to receive benefits.
LCCR is
committed to setting a national goal to cut poverty in half in ten years. We
are a founding partner of Half in Ten: From Poverty to Prosperity, a new
campaign run jointly by ACORN, the Center for American Progress, the Coalition
on Human Needs and LCCR. Among the initiatives sought by the campaign are
substantial improvements in the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.
Under the current poverty measure, success in achieving these important
improvements will not result in any reduction in the official poverty rate
because refundable tax credits are not counted as income. Similarly, LCCR
supports increases in Food Stamp benefits, but when those occur, the poverty
rate will not change because food stamps are not counted as income. The change
proposed in your legislation will allow a more accurate assessment of whether
benefit increases have the desired effect, and further, whether certain
population groups are helped more or less than others.
We note that
whatever its imperfections, the current poverty measure has been very important
in allowing us to see trends over time. We urge great care in making the
transition from the old to the new standard, so that researchers remain able to
evaluate trends. We also urge the Census Bureau to include, as part of its
mission, the education of advocates and service providers in the proper use of
the old and new statistics.
We look forward
to working with you to modernize the assessment of poverty, and in using a more
accurate measure to develop effective anti-poverty legislation. If you have
any questions, please contact Nancy Zirkin at 202/263-2880 or Corrine Yu, LCCR Senior Counsel, 202/466-5670, regarding this or any issue.
Sincerely,
Wade Henderson Nancy
Zirkin
President & CEO Executive
Vice President / VP of Public Policy
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