The Census Bureau’s annual report on poverty, income, and health coverage shows major economic improvement on a number of indicators, including a drop in poverty from 14.8% of Americans in 2014 to 13.5% in 2015. Virtually all groups of Americans, including children, shared in the poverty reduction, with about one million fewer children living in poverty and the child poverty rate improving from 21.1 percent in 2014 to 19.7 percent in 2015. Notably, the report quantifies the continued success of SNAP, School Lunch Program, and the Earned Income Tax Credit in helping large numbers of Americans. For example, the Census Bureau’s special poverty measure, which estimate the effects of the EITC, SNAP, and other programs on poverty (necessary because these programs are not included in the regular poverty measure), finds that in 2015, SNAP raised 4.6 million people out of poverty, the EITC and other refundable tax credits affected 9.2 million, and school lunches boosted 1.2 million.
Source: Center for Law & Social Progress, 9/13/16, Poverty Uplift
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