Poverty Statistics Enhancement Act
Sponsored By: Senator John Kennedy
Introduced
Summary
Change how poverty is measured. This bill would require the Bureau of the Census to add a Congressional Budget Office style distributional analysis of household income and adopt a new, broader income calculation for official poverty estimates.
Show full summary
- Households and families: It expands what counts as income to include wages, self-employment, interest, dividends, rents, realized capital gains, employer-paid benefits, some in-kind lodging and meals, and more. This shifts which resources are counted when identifying who is in poverty.
- People who receive benefits: The bill defines government transfer payments widely and lists many programs and refundable tax credits to be treated as transfers, including SNAP, Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare subsidies, refundable credits such as the earned income tax credit and child tax credit, housing assistance, Pell Grants, WIC, and school meal programs.
- Data agencies and tax data users: It requires using IRS return information and statistical agency benchmarks, reconciling totals of taxes and transfers, and making adjustments for missing or misreported data under specified rules.
Your PRIA Score
Personalized for You
How does this bill affect your finances?
Sign up for a PRIA Policy Scan to see your personalized alignment score for this bill and every other piece of legislation we track. We analyze your financial profile against policy provisions to show you exactly what matters to your wallet.
Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
1 provisions identified: 0 benefits, 0 costs, 1 mixed.
New poverty measure and data rules
If enacted, the Census Bureau would add a new national poverty measure using the Congressional Budget Office approach within one year. The new measure would count income as earnings plus government transfers minus taxes, and it would treat refunds from refundable tax credits as government transfers rather than tax reductions. The Census Director would have to reconcile income and tax figures to trusted benchmarks, request federal data (agencies must supply permitted data within 180 days), and may ask state and local agencies for data. The Director would report to Congress within one year after implementation and would recalculate historical income and inequality measures using the new method. Personal data would be protected under existing Census confidentiality rules, and knowing violations could bring fines up to $300,000 or up to 5 years in prison.
Sponsors & CoSponsors
Sponsor
John Kennedy
LA • R
Cosponsors
There are no cosponsors for this bill.
Roll Call Votes
No roll call votes available for this bill.
View on Congress.govTake It Personal
Get Your Personalized Policy View
Start a Free Government Policy Watch to see how policy affects your household, then upgrade to PRIA Full Coverage for year-round monitoring.
Already have an account? Sign in