Missed Measures
The impact of many promising poverty-reduction approaches -- Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child Care Tax Credit, and State Child Health Insurance Program -- were not included in the current poverty measure.
Child poverty remains a central focus of the United States' social policy agenda, yet poverty reduction efforts at the time of this brief relied on data that were inadequate, outdated or obsolete. Much of the data gathering at the national. state and local levels were just as bad. The Annie E. Casey Foundation outlined several policy recommendations to update and improve the nation's information infrastructure.
For more than 60 years, evidence from the Census Bureau showed that racial minorities and low-income communities were the most likely to be undercounted.