A few weeks after the recent election New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and said, “New Mexico’s went from 50 th to 17 th on child poverty (in the nation).” This is simply untrue.
The Gov. is conflating the US Census Bureau’s traditional poverty measure in which we remain 50 th and its supplemental measure which includes several federal and state government programs and New Mexico performs better on. To be completely clear, these are very different measures. Conflating them is simply not accurate. The Gov. should stop.
A recent news story by Dan Boyd of the Albuquerque Journal noted “The supplemental measure factors in government benefits, like New Mexico’s state-subsidized lunches for public school students. It also includes tax credits and cost-of-living calculations.”
Boyd quoted Tax and Revenue Secretary Stephanie Schardin Clarke calling the supplemental poverty measure “more accurate than the traditional poverty ranking.” But is it really? New Mexico’s “supplemental” poverty measure (never as low as the traditional measure) has improved slightly relative to other states in recent years. Have there been a big improvement in outcomes for New Mexico children in the last 5-10 years? I’d argue that if anything, New Mexico children are doing worse than ever.