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Working
Paper Series:
07.21
Consumption and Income Poverty for those 65 and Over
Bruce D. Meyer and James X. Sullivan
http://www.harrisschool.uchicago.edu/faculty/web-pages/bruce-meyer.asp
Abstract:
This paper examines income and consumption based measures of poverty for
those 65 and over between 1972 and 2004. This study contributes to the existing
literature on poverty in several ways. First, we construct consumption based measures of
poverty that improve upon measures used in previous studies. In particular, we develop
better measures of consumption of durables including vehicles and housing and we
incorporate the value of health insurance into our measure of consumption. Second, we
provide estimates of consumption based poverty for those 65 and over using the most
recent data through 2004. Third, we examine the effect on poverty trends of alternative
price indices, equivalence scales, and resource sharing units (the family or household).
Fourth, in addition to poverty rates, which focus on the cumulative distribution function
at a single point, we also study extreme poverty, near poverty and poverty gaps in order
to examine more fully the trends in well-being of older individuals.
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