America's Children in Poverty: A New Look at Who's Poor Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure

This research brief examines child poverty in 2010 using both the official poverty measure that the Census Bureau has been using since the 1960s and the more recent Research Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). It examines three groups of children - the "core" poor who live in families who are poor regardless of which measure is used, the "lifted out" children who are classified as poor under the official measure but are no longer poor under the supplemental poverty measure, and children who are not poor under the official measure but who are "thrown in" to poverty under the new SPM measure. The brief identifies the core characteristics of each group of poor children and demonstrates what each measure independently contributes to our understanding of child poverty.