Following decades of research, an Interagency Technical Working Group on Developing a Supplemental Poverty Measure (ITWG) developed a series of recommendations to allow the U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to produce the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). The SPM is released along with, the official poverty measure each year. The SPM expands the official poverty measure in several ways, with a more comprehensive resource measure and geographically-adjusted thresholds, which vary by housing tenure. The SPM also extends the definition of a resource unit beyond the Census family definition, to include unmarried partners and their relatives, foster children under age 22, and unrelated children under age 15. This expansion not only changes the composition of resource units from the official measure but also adds unrelated individuals under age 15 to the universe included in the poverty estimation sample.

As a result of this universe difference, “official” poverty rates published in Census’ annual SPM Reports (see Renwick and Fox, 2016) have historically differed from the official poverty rates published in Census’ Income and Poverty Reports (see Proctor, Semega and Kollar, 2016). This paper describes the methodology that has been used by the Census Bureau to estimate the official poverty status of unrelated individuals under age 15 in both sets of reports. This paper then presents a suggested revision to more accurately reflect the likely status of unrelated individuals under age 15 and reduce some of the disparity in estimates of official poverty across Census publications.