Understanding Income-to-Threshold Ratios Using the SPM: People with Moderate Income

Kathleen S. Short, U.S. Census Bureau

Last year the Census Bureau released the first report detailing a new Supplemental Poverty Measure following suggestions from an interagency technical working group. Notable was the increase in the percent of individuals with income in the lower middle of the SPM resource distribution. This group represents what we refer to as people of ‘moderate income’ whose net resources are between 1 and 2 times the SPM threshold, the focus of this paper. We document who is in this group relative to those groups immediately below and above, as well as who is “lifted into” this group and who is “pushed down” into it and why. Further investigation into the SPM will benefit our understanding of the implications of this new measure for those who are not poor but for whom the SPM concepts might apply, including the moderate income group we focus on here.