Toward Understanding the Relationship of Temporal Changes in Demographic Structure to Changes in U.S. Poverty

This paper attempts to quantify how changes in demographic trends have affected the poverty rate in the United States since the start of the "War on Poverty" in the 1960's. The analysis uses both the official Census poverty definition and a supplemental poverty measure that better captures both the resources available to families and their expenditure needs. Using regression estimates to construct a counterfactual, our results reveal that, while some demographic change increase poverty and others decrease poverty, the net effect of the changes in the demographic structure of the U.S. population was to reduce both of these two measures of poverty.