Newsroom Archive

Kathleen Short

U.S. Census Bureau

Kathleen Short began working at the Census Bureau in 1984 with the Survey of Income and Program Participation research staff in Population Division after receiving her doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan. She has also worked in the Center for International Research and in the Income Statistics Branch in what is now the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division.

From 1991 to 1999, she served as chief of the Poverty and Health Statistics Branch and currently works as an economist conducting research on improving statistical measures of poverty. Over her career at the Census Bureau, Short has worked primarily in the area of measuring economic well-being — preparing an international database on child well-being and reports on extended measures of well-being, such as material hardship. She has done extensive work with the Survey of Income and Program Participation, analyzing income and labor force transitions and spells of poverty and health insurance coverage.

Short has also published several professional journal articles on measuring material hardship, poverty and housing, poverty and medical expenses, poverty measures that take account of assets and debt, and methods of measuring poverty. The journals include American Economic Review, Journal of Social Policy, Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Income Distribution, and the Review of Income and Wealth.