PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - H. Luke Shaefer
AU  - Kathryn Edin
AU  - Elizabeth Talbert
TI  - Understanding the Dynamics of $2-a-Day Poverty in the United States
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2015.1.1.07
DP  - 2015 Nov 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 120--138
VI  - 1
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/1/1/120.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/1/1/120.full
AB  - Shaefer and Edin (2013) have found a large rise in “extreme poverty”—defined as cash income of no more than $2 per person per day, for a month or calendar quarter—among U.S. households with children between 1996 and 2011. This article explores some underlying dynamics of this phenomenon, referred to here as “$2-a-day poverty,” presenting evidence from both qualitative fieldwork and quantitative analysis of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The rise in $2-a-day poverty has been concentrated among children experiencing it chronically—that is, for seven or more months during a calendar year. Both qualitative and quantitative evidence find that a large majority of children experiencing $2-a-day poverty live in households where an adult worked during the year, while only a small proportion live in households accessing TANF. Finally, households experiencing $2-a-day poverty appear to be more likely to face material hardships than other low-income households.