Local members of Put People First PA were interviewed for the website Breakthrough News on how medical debt is impoverishing and killing its victims. The video can be seen above. Government measures (which haven’t changed since the 60s) of poverty are often criticized for being inflexible. To respond to these criticisms, the supplemental poverty measure (SPM) was created by the Census Bureau in 2009 as a response to these criticisms. This holiday season I’m taking a look at the supplemental poverty measure in Pennsylvania. The overall U.S. SPM rate was 12.9% in 2023. Conversely, the official poverty was 11.1% for the U.S. in 2023.
Pennsylvania Thresholds
The SPM is a sliding scale for poverty that takes into consideration the cost of living in different parts of the U.S. The graph above shows the poverty thresholds for the U.S. as a whole and for the non-metro (rural) parts of Pennsylvania. The thresholds are different for home owners with a mortgage, for home owners without a mortgage, and for renters. If you fall below the thresholds for your category, then you are considered poor. These numbers are indexed to median rents. An index greater than one suggests that rents are greater than the national median.
Pennsylvania’s non-metro index for cost of living is seen 0.60. This is based on median rents. The rural area’s median rents are 60% of the national median rent. The metro poverty thresholds for Pennsylvania are presented below.
Pennsylvania Metro Areas
The graph above shows poverty thresholds for the metro areas of Pennsylvania. The overall index for these area are 0.79. These areas (with indexes) are Allentown (1.021), Chambersburg (0.795), East Stroudsburg (1.033), Erie (0.715), Harrisburg (0.906), Johnstown (0.577), Lancaster (0.975), Philadelphia (1.135), Pittsburgh (0.900), Reading (0.899), Scranton (0.718), Williamsport (0.711), and York (0.867). The non-metro area are located everywhere else. Out of the 11 metro areas located completely in the state, only 3 have indices above one.
The Johnstown metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is the only area in the state with an index lower than the state non-metro index. Accordingly the poverty thresholds are lower The Johnstown MSA covers all of Cambria and Somerset Counties. There are no public estimates for poverty rates below the state level. Johnstown hardly qualifies as a metropolitan area anymore. Philadelphia has an index above one which means it has higher poverty thresholds than the national thresholds.
Conclusion
For Pennsylvania, the three year average of the poverty rate from 2021-2023 was 9.1% while the official 3 year average of the poverty rate was 10.7. It seems as though the Supplemental Poverty Measure in Pennsylvania underestimates poverty in rural areas. Areas with lower costs of living also have less income to pay for things. The Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates will be released in a few weeks for all counties and school districts in the U.S.