درباره مصرف - فقر سالانه در ایالات متحده: واکنش به تکانه و اهمیت تنوع سالانه

We use U.S. quarterly consumption data and decomposable poverty indexes to study consumption-based intra-annual poverty and its relationship to participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Intra-annual spells of consumption-poverty account for half of the incidence and one-third of the severity of all consumption-poverty among U.S. households. Households experiencing consumption-poverty for at least one quarter, but not for the whole year, are more likely to self-select into SNAP than the general population but less likely to do so than those who are poor for the year. SNAP participation, in turn, reduces annual and intra-annual poverty.

Static poverty measures, based on the share of households with annual incomes below the poverty line, provide an incomplete representation of material deprivation among U.S. households. The importance that the dynamic nature of poverty has for understanding deprivation and for developing an effective social safety net is now well recognized in social science; the poverty dynamics agenda has elicited dozens of studies in the context of the U.S. alone (Cellini, McKernan, & Ratcliffe, 2008).