Many studies examine the anti-poverty effects of social insurance and means-tested transfers, relying solely on survey … Program Participation data. Using the linked data, we find that Social Security cuts the poverty rate by a third - more than … effective. All programs except for the EITC sharply reduce deep poverty (below 50% of the poverty line), while the impact of the …

using the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics. We link administrative … income of poor households. Underreporting in the survey data also greatly understates the effects of anti-poverty programs … and changes our understanding of program targeting. Using the combined data rather than survey data alone, the poverty …

This paper considers the long-run patterns of poverty in the United States from the early 1960s to 2010. Our results … contradict previous studies that have argued that poverty has shown little improvement over time or that anti-poverty efforts … have been ineffective. We find that moving from traditional income-based measures of poverty to a consumption-based measure …