One dimension of poverty that cannot be captured using data from the Current Population Survey is its persistence, since the CPS only asks about income in a given year and does not ask about individuals’ income history.
Bane and Ellwood (1986) provide a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of poverty.
In particular, imagine that during a calendar year one family is poor for all 12 months and 12 other families are poor for only one month each.
At any given time, two families are poor, and half of those who are poor at any given time are poor for the long term. But over the course of a year, only one of the 13 families who experienced at least one month of poverty were poor for an