Prior to the implementation of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) in 2011, the Census Bureau produced a series of reports and estimates that applied the recommendations outlined in the 1995 National Academy of Science report, “Measuring Poverty: A New Approach,” beginning with initial estimates released in 1999.

These NAS-based alternative poverty measures continued to evolve and were formalized over time into a consistent series providing estimates for 1999 onward. The last report based on the earlier NAS-based methodology was released in 2005.

Since then, the Census Bureau has annually released tables and data files with the NAS-based estimates that provided data users a consistent time series back to 1999. These are available on the Census Bureau FTP site.

As of 2019, the Census Bureau will no longer produce these tables and research files with the NAS-based poverty measures. The documentation and SAS program below allow interested users to create NAS-based poverty measures from the 2019 CPS ASEC public use file, as well as for future CPS ASEC public use data releases.

Note: This program can also be used to provide NAS based poverty estimates from the 2017 CPS ASEC Research file and 2018 CPS ASEC Bridge file but will not work on earlier datasets from the CPS ASEC that do not reflect the redesigned processing system. For more information on the CPS ASEC redesign, see: