A recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation indicates that child poverty in the U.S. has nearly tripled since 2021. In Arkansas, the Supplemental Poverty Measure is at 14 % higher than the national average.
Pete Gess is the economic policy director at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and he says that indicator, Supplemental Poverty Measure, was launched in 2011 by the U.S. Census Bureau to better reflect the data that articulates poverty.
Pete Gess: One is it includes other real world costs that families face, such as healthcare, childcare expenses, housing expenses. But it also includes a more realistic food budget. And it also has regional differences. So, as you might expect, even in Arkansas, food probably costs different in Northwest Arkansas than it does in the Delta, for example. And certainly there’s lots of variation across the country. And finally, and probably most important for this conversation is that the Supplemental Poverty Measure also includes those public assistance programs that are provided to Americans. So things like, you know, Section 8 housing vouchers or SNAP benefits, the supplementary nutrition program. Right. All of these things obviously affect the family budget as well. And so what this measure is doing is looking at using primarily the Supplemental Poverty Measure, how many children around the country and narrowing into Arkansas are in poverty…