Counting What Counts: Moving Beyond Income Poverty to Better Understand Deprivation

This chapter establishes a conceptual foundation for a multidimensional approach to deprivation measurement. Although income-based measures of poverty remain central to U.S. policy and administrative practice, they provide an incomplete view of hardship. A review of more than six decades of official poverty statistics reveals persistent disparities in income poverty rates across racial and ethnic groups and demonstrates that income poverty is only weakly correlated with other deprivations, including poor health, limited education, and substandard housing. Moreover, because these disadvantages are often experienced together and reinforce one another, income poverty is an inadequate proxy for the broader experience of deprivation. By situating income poverty within its historical, empirical, and policy contexts, an argument is made for the adoption of a multidimensional framework to more accurately capture the lived experiences of deprivation in the United States. To that end, a Multidimensional Deprivation Index is introduced to encompass the four dimensions of economic security, education, health, and housing.