This is the third release of the NEWS project, covering 2016 to 2021. The NEWS project aims to produce the best possible estimates of income and poverty given all available survey, decennial census, administrative, and third-party data. We estimate improved income and poverty statistics by addressing bias from unit non-response, missing information, and measurement error. 

Relative to the previous version, this release

• Adds five additional years of income and poverty estimates,
• Allows comparisons of income and poverty estimates over time by demographic subgroup, and
• Uses administrative data to better model tax credits during the Pandemic, such as Economic Impact Payments.

The estimates in the Excel tables are available for many demographic subgroups, so you can compare how child poverty or disposable household income in the Midwest changes over time. 

Overall, we find that standard survey-based income and poverty estimates are biased, and these biases vary by subgroup and over time. This can cause estimates to miss important facts about how economic well-being is changing over time and why.  For example, the NEWS and survey estimate of child poverty differ over time due to changes in survey nonresponse bias and sources of income, particularly with the large expansion of unemployment insurance during the pandemic. Child poverty was 1.5pp lower in NEWS than the survey in 2018, they were not statistically different in 2019 or 2021, and the NEWS estimate was 3.8pp lower than the survey in 2020 (according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure).

This is the second release of the U.S. Census Bureau's National Experimental Well-being Statistics (NEWS) project. The NEWS project aims to produce the best possible estimates of income and poverty given all available survey, decennial census, administrative, and third-party data. We estimate improved income and poverty statistics by addressing bias from unit non-response, missing information and measurement error. In addition to pre-tax money income, which release 1 focused on, this release greatly expands the income definitions our data cover by additionally creating measures of 1) disposable income, 2) a resource measure inclusive of non-health means-tested in-kind benefits, and 3) the income concept used for estimating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). In addition, this release implements several improvements, most importantly: 1) we estimated federal and state taxes and credits, 2) we integrated additional administrative data on means-tested program benefits, 3) we updated our model for combining survey and administrative earnings to better estimate the unobserved true earnings distribution given the earnings reported across data sources and the other observable characteristics of individuals.

Please provide your feedback: census.newsproject@census.gov

The previously published paper is linked to below and the previously published data are archived on the FTP2 site.