Overlooked and Undercounted - Insight Center for Community ...

I. Introduction
With living costs rising faster than incomes, more and more of Mississippi’s families are facing economic hardships as
they struggle to cover basic needs such as food, shelter, health care, and child care. Yet even as an increasing number
of families’ budgets are stretched to the breaking point, the percentage of families officially designated as “poor” by
the federal government has remained more or less constant in the first decade of the twenty-first century, with 17%
of Mississippi families and nearly 10% of U.S. families considered poor. 1 At the same time, because many federal and
state programs provide support only to those with incomes below the official Federal Poverty Level (FPL), a large and
diverse group of families experiencing economic distress are routinely overlooked and undercounted.
This report reveals the “overlooked and undercounted” of Mississippi, describing which families are struggling to make
ends meet. This analysis is based primarily on the Self-Sufficiency Standard, a realistic, geographically specific and
family composition-specific measure of income adequacy, and thus a more accurate alternative to the federal poverty
measure. Using data from the 2007 American Community Survey, household incomes are compared to the Self-
Sufficiency Standard (as well as the Federal Poverty Level) across a wide range of household characteristics—geographic
location, race/ethnicity, employment patterns, gender, and occupation. What emerges is a new picture of those in
Mississippi who lack enough to meet their needs, including where they live and the characteristics of their households.
With this information, our findings and conclusions can inform and guide the creation of economic and workforce
policies in Mississippi that will enable the overlooked and undercounted to achieve economic self-sufficiency.
This report begins with a brief description of the Self-Sufficiency Standard and the methodology used in this report.
The detailed findings section presents the role of various demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and family
composition, followed by the role of education and employment factors on rates of income inadequacy. This report
then presents a profile of Mississippi families below the Self-Sufficiency Standard. This report concludes with policy
implications and recommendations based on this research.
II. The Self-Sufficiency Standard
Though innovative for its time, many researchers and
policy analysts have concluded that the official poverty
measure, developed over four decades ago by Mollie
Orshansky, is methodologically dated and no longer an
accurate measure of poverty. Beginning with studies
such as Ruggles’ Drawing the Line (1990) 2 , and Renwick
and Bergman’s article proposing a “basic needs budget”
(1993) 3 , many have commented on the official measure
and/or offered alternatives. These discussions culminated
in the early 1990s with a congressionally mandated
comprehensive study by the National Academy of
Sciences, which brought together hundreds of scientists,
commissioned studies and papers, and compiled a set of
recommendations. These studies and suggestions were
summarized in the 1995 book, Measuring Poverty: A New
Approach. 4 Despite substantial consensus on a wide range
of methodological issues and the need for new measures,
no changes have been made to the FPL in the decade
since the report’s release. Even the Census Bureau now
characterizes the federal poverty measure as a “statistical
yardstick rather than a complete description of what
people and families need to live.” 5
In light of these critiques, the Self-Sufficiency Standard
was developed to provide a more accurate, nuanced
measure of income adequacy. 6 While designed to address
the major shortcomings of the FPL, the Self-Sufficiency
Standard also reflects the realities faced by today’s
working parents, such as child care and taxes, which are
not addressed in the federal poverty measure. Moreover,
the Standard takes advantage of the greater accessibility,
timeliness, and accuracy of current data and software, as
compared to that available four decades ago.