Progress and stagnation: US poverty, deep poverty, and the safety net, 1967–2023
This paper explores changes in U.S. poverty since the late 1960s and the role that changes in safety net programs played in these developments.
本文探讨了 20 世纪 60 年代末以来美国贫困的变化以及安全网计划的变化在这些发展中所发挥的作用。
We examine changes in the poverty rate, poverty gap, deep poverty rate, and deep poverty gap from 1967 to 2023, using both the “historical/standard” and “anchored” Supplemental Poverty Measures.
我们使用“历史/标准”和“锚定”补充贫困指标来研究1967年至2023年贫困率、贫困差距、深度贫困率和深度贫困差距的变化。
The paper finds that the poverty rate and poverty gap declined markedly over this period, with the poverty gap declining somewhat less than the poverty rate.
研究发现，这一时期贫困率和贫困差距显着下降，且贫困差距下降幅度略小于贫困率下降幅度。
The paper finds considerably less progress, however, in reducing deep poverty and especially the deep poverty gap, which shows little improvement over this period.
然而，本文发现，在减少深度贫困，特别是深度贫困差距方面，进展甚微，在此期间几乎没有任何改善。
The paper also finds that these poverty changes have not been evenly distributed, with the most concerning results being for people aged 18–64 who have little or no earnings and do not live with children.
该论文还发现，这些贫困变化的分布并不均匀，最令人担忧的结果是 18 至 64 岁之间收入很少或没有收入且不与孩子住在一起的人。
The paper finds that these trends reflect both the overall strengthening of the safety net over this period, especially for the elderly and low-income working families with children, and the weakening of parts of the safety net—especially cash assistance programs—for many very poor people who have little or no earnings and are not elderly or classified as disabled.
论文发现，这些趋势既反映了这一时期安全网的整体加强，特别是针对老年人和有孩子的低收入工薪家庭，也反映了部分安全网的削弱，尤其是现金援助计划，针对许多收入很少或没有收入、非老年人或被归类为残疾人的贫困人口。
The findings also reflect the failure of the economic growth that occurred over this period to generate much poverty reduction.
研究结果还反映出这一时期的经济增长未能大幅减少贫困。
Because our analysis ends in 2023, it does not reflect the deep cuts to safety net programs enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) of 2025.
由于我们的分析于 2023 年结束，因此并未反映出 2025 年《美丽大法案》(OBBBA) 中颁布的安全网计划的大幅削减。
When fully in effect, those cuts almost certainly will increase poverty and deep poverty rates and gaps and will thus reverse some of the gains reported here.
一旦全面实施，这些削减措施几乎肯定会加剧贫困、加深贫困率和差距，从而扭转本文报告的一些成果。
How has the level of poverty in the United States changed since the late 1960s, and what role have changes in social programs played in those developments?
自 20 世纪 60 年代末以来，美国的贫困水平发生了怎样的变化？社会计划的变化在这些发展中发挥了什么作用？
A 2025 Hamilton Project paper, “Changes in the safety net over recent decades and their impact” (Greenstein 2025), explores this question with respect to poverty rates and finds, as many other studies have, that poverty rates declined substantially over this period due primarily to the expansion of safety net programs (Wimer et al.
2025 年汉密尔顿项目论文“近几十年来安全网的变化及其影响”（Greenstein 2025）探讨了与贫困率相关的问题，并发现，正如许多其他研究一样，贫困率在此期间大幅下降，主要是由于安全网计划的扩大（Wimer 等，2025）。
2016; Fox et al.
2016年；福克斯等人。
2015b; Wimer et al.
2015b；维默等人。
2025; Kearney and Sullivan 2025; Bahk et al.
2025；科尔尼和沙利文 2025；巴克等人。
2024).
2024）。
This analysis builds on that paper, principally by also looking at changes in deep poverty—that is, when poverty is measured using a threshold of 50 percent of the poverty line—and in the poverty gap from 1967 to 2023.
本分析以该论文为基础，主要还考察了深度贫困（即使用贫困线 50% 的阈值来衡量贫困）以及 1967 年至 2023 年贫困差距的变化。
Poverty rates measure what share of the population lives below the poverty line (or, in the case of deep poverty rates, below 50 percent of the poverty line) but not how far below the line people who are poor fall.
贫困率衡量的是有多少人口生活在贫困线以下（或者，在深度贫困率的情况下，生活在贫困线的 50% 以下），而不是贫困人口的生活水平。
Poverty gap measures, by contrast, capture not only whether people are poor but also how far below the poverty line they are.
相比之下，贫困差距指标不仅反映人们是否贫困，还反映他们距离贫困线有多远。
If people who are already relatively close to the poverty line are raised above it by the economy or changes in government policies, but people who are much poorer are pushed deeper into poverty by economic or policy changes, then poverty rates can fall without commensurate improvement in the poverty gap, and the deep poverty rate can come down less than the overall poverty rate.
如果已经相对接近贫困线的人因经济或政府政策的变化而提高到贫困线以上，但贫困得多的人因经济或政策的变化而陷入更深的贫困，那么贫困率可能会下降，但贫困差距不会相应改善，而且深度贫困率的下降可能会低于总体贫困率。
We find that over the 1967–2023 period that is the focus of this paper, both the poverty rate and the poverty gap declined markedly using the 100-percent-of-poverty threshold, with poverty gaps declining somewhat less than poverty rates.
我们发现，在本文重点关注的 1967 年至 2023 年期间，使用 100% 贫困线作为贫困线，贫困率和贫困差距均显着下降，其中贫困差距的下降幅度略小于贫困率。
As figure 1 shows, the poverty rate declined by about one-quarter to one-half (depending on what poverty measure one uses, as we discuss below), with the poverty gap falling by modestly less than that.
如图 1 所示，贫困率下降了约四分之一到二分之一（取决于所使用的贫困衡量标准，如下文所述），而贫困差距的下降幅度略小于这一数字。
There has been less progress, however, in reducing deep poverty and especially in reducing the deep poverty gap, which does not show much improvement over this period.
然而，在减少深度贫困方面，特别是在缩小深度贫困差距方面，进展较小，在此期间并没有显示出太大的改善。
Our most concerning results are for people aged 18 to 64 who do not live with children.
我们最令人担忧的结果是针对年龄在 18 岁至 64 岁之间、不与孩子住在一起的人。
These findings reflect both the overall strengthening of the U.S. safety net that occurred over this period—particularly for low-income working families with children and people 65 and over—and the failure of the economic growth that occurred over this period to generate substantial poverty reduction.
这些调查结果既反映了这一时期美国安全网的整体加强（特别是针对有孩子和 65 岁及以上老年人的低收入工薪家庭），也反映了这一时期的经济增长未能大幅减少贫困。
The findings also reflect the weakening of the safety net for many very poor households who have little or no earnings and are not elderly or disabled.
调查结果还反映出，许多收入很少或没有收入、非老年人或残疾人的非常贫困家庭的安全网正在减弱。
Since the late 1980s, substantial cuts have been made in cash assistance programs for such households.
自 20 世纪 80 年代末以来，针对此类家庭的现金援助计划大幅削减。
1
1
This paper relies on a series of data analyses that cover the years from 1967 to 2023, which can be found in the supplemental Excel tables published alongside this paper.
本文基于涵盖 1967 年至 2023 年的一系列数据分析，这些数据可以在与本文一起发布的补充 Excel 表格中找到。
The years 1967 and 2023 represent appropriate comparison years, with very similar unemployment rates in both years (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], n.d.).
1967 年和 2023 年是适当的比较年，这两年的失业率非常相似（美国劳工统计局 [BLS]，n.d.）。
2
2
These analyses were conducted using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), as well as historical Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) data produced by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
这些分析是使用人口普查局当前人口调查年度社会和经济补充资料 (CPS ASEC) 的数据以及哥伦比亚大学贫困和社会政策中心生成的历史补充贫困测量 (SPM) 数据进行的。
3 We created an anchored SPM series using the 2023 SPM thresholds, as adjusted for inflation, using the U.S. Department of Labor’s retroactive CPI research series (R-CPI-U-RS).
3 我们使用 2023 年 SPM 阈值创建了一个锚定 SPM 系列，并根据通货膨胀进行了调整，并使用了美国劳工部的追溯 CPI 研究系列 (R-CPI-U-RS)。
Our analyses rest on more than a decade of pioneering work in this area by Christopher Wimer and others at the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy, who first established SPM data series that extend back to the 1960s and have produced an array of papers on SPM poverty trends since then (Fox et al.
我们的分析基于克里斯托弗·威默 (Christopher Wimer) 和哥伦比亚贫困与社会政策中心的其他人十多年来在这一领域的开创性工作，他们首先建立了可追溯到 20 世纪 60 年代的 SPM 数据系列，并从那时起发表了一系列关于 SPM 贫困趋势的论文（Fox 等人，2017）。
2015a; Fox et al.
2015a；福克斯等人。
2015b; Wimer et al.
2015b；维默等人。
2016; Wimer et al.
2016年；维默等人。
2025; Vinh et al.
2025；文赫等人。
2025).
2025）。
In addition to its findings regarding poverty trends, this paper discusses several issues related to poverty measurement, including the advantages of using both the historical SPM and the anchored SPM to track changes in poverty over time.
除了有关贫困趋势的发现之外，本文还讨论了与贫困测量相关的几个问题，包括使用历史 SPM 和锚定 SPM 来跟踪贫困随时间变化的优势。
As explained below, this analysis uses both of these SPM measures to provide what we regard as upper and lower bounds for changes in SPM-measured poverty over time.
如下所述，本分析使用这两种 SPM 衡量标准来提供我们认为的 SPM 衡量的贫困随时间变化的上限和下限。
The paper opens with a discussion of these poverty-measurement issues and then provides data on changes in poverty rates and the poverty gap over the 1967–2023 period, using both of the SPMs and employing both 100-percent-of-poverty-line and 50-percent-of-poverty-line thresholds to measure changes in both in poverty and deep poverty.
本文首先讨论了这些贫困衡量问题，然后提供了 1967 年至 2023 年期间贫困率和贫困差距变化的数据，使用了 SPM 并采用贫困线 100% 和贫困线 50% 的阈值来衡量贫困和深度贫困的变化。
The paper then turns to a discussion of the role of safety net changes in affecting these results.
然后，本文转而讨论安全网变化在影响这些结果方面的作用。
Safety net expansions have played the predominant role in generating the large declines we see in the poverty rate and poverty gap, but sharp cuts in basic cash assistance for people who aren’t elderly or disabled and have little or no earnings have been a factor in the relative lack of progress on deep poverty for certain population groups.
安全网的扩大在贫困率和贫困差距大幅下降的过程中发挥了主导作用，但对非老年人或残疾人以及收入很少或没有收入的人的基本现金援助的大幅削减是某些人口群体在消除深度贫困方面相对缺乏进展的一个因素。
Our analysis ends in 2023 and thus before the enactment and implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) of 2025, a measure that makes the deepest cuts in programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program), Medicaid, and health coverage provided through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces in those programs’ histories.
我们的分析结束于 2023 年，也就是 2025 年《美丽大法案》 (OBBBA) 颁布和实施之前，这项措施对补充营养援助计划 (SNAP，以前称为食品券计划)、医疗补助计划以及通过《平价医疗法案》市场提供的健康保险等计划进行了历史上最大幅度的削减。
The bill also includes stiff cuts in the eligibility of various groups of legally present immigrants for certain benefits.
该法案还包括大幅削减各类合法移民群体获得某些福利的资格。
Many of these reductions have not yet been fully implemented.
其中许多削减尚未完全实施。
When the rollbacks are fully in effect, they almost certainly will increase poverty and deep poverty rates and gaps, as well as the number of people who lack health coverage, and will thus reverse some of the gains reported here (CBO 2025b; CBO 2025c).
当回滚完全生效时，几乎肯定会增加贫困和深度贫困率和差距，以及缺乏医疗保险的人数，从而扭转此处报告的一些成果（CBO 2025b；CBO 2025c）。
Our analyses also show that these poverty declines are primarily the result of expansions of social programs over these years rather than growth in the economy.
我们的分析还表明，贫困率的下降主要是这些年来社会计划扩大的结果，而不是经济增长的结果。
The poverty rate and poverty gap, as measured before government benefits and taxes are taken into account, declined modestly or even increased over the 1967–2023 period.
1967年至2023年期间，在考虑政府福利和税收之前衡量的贫困率和贫困差距略有下降，甚至有所增加。
It is only after government benefits and taxes are counted that poverty is seen to have declined markedly.
只有在算上政府福利和税收之后，贫困率才显着下降。
(See figure 1.)
（见图 1。）