Although many opponents of welfare reform predicted that it would increase hardship, the official poverty rate for female headed families with children fell from 42 percent in 1996 to 34 percent in 2002. Skeptics have nonetheless argued that declines in official poverty rates may have been...

One can use the Census Bureau's income statistics to show either that low-income children were considerably worse off or considerably better off in 1999 than in 1969. Likewise, one can use Census statistics to show that middle-income children gained very little or a great deal between 1969 and...

Public concern with poverty derives in large part from the assumption that low income families cannot afford necessities. Yet official poverty statistics focus on measuring income, not on measuring material hardship. Two surveys of Chicago residents measure whether families could afford food,...