The Poverty Research Team is responsible for the development of CEO's poverty measure. The work has received nationwide attention and contributed to recently announced plans for a Federal Supplemental Poverty Measure.

Team members regularly consult with researchers and statisticians from around the country to aid in the development of comparable local measures. The Team also provides data on income, employment, and poverty for use by City Agencies. The Research Team is led by the CEO Director of Poverty Research, Dr. Mark Levitan.

Working Paper: Policy Affects Poverty

The NYC Center for Economic Opportunity's new working paper, titled "Policy Affects Poverty" tracks the change in the CEO poverty rate during the Great Recession. The paper explores the extent to which policy initiatives - including the Presidents Bush's and Obama's stimulus programs and the City's effort to increase Food Stamp enrollment - kept the New York City poverty rate from rising.
Policy Affects Poverty: The CEO Poverty Measure, 2005-2009 (March 2011) (in PDF)

Past Working Papers

CEO's first working paper on poverty in New York City, issued in August of 2008, contrasted poverty rates for 2006 derived from CEO's application of the NAS methodology against those based on the official method. The 2010 report focused on how and why poverty rates using our methodology have changed over time, using the one-year ACS samples for 2005 to 2008.
The CEO Poverty Measure, 2005-2008 (March 2010) (in PDF)
The Executive Summary for The CEO Poverty Measure, 2005-2008 (March 2010) (in PDF)
The CEO Poverty Measure (August 2008) (in PDF)

National Interest

In March 2010, the Obama Administration announced that the U.S. Census Bureau will pursue a similarly structured Supplemental Poverty Measure. Beginning in the fall of 2011, the new Supplemental Poverty Measure will be released simultaneously with the official measure, which will continue to be used to determine eligibility for government programs.

In September 2008, legislation was introduced by Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) and Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) proposing that the methodology used to calculate the Federal poverty measure be revised based on the same National Academy of Sciences' recommendations that inform the CEO measure.

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