The Poverty Area Measures data product
Open accessAbstract
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Poverty Area Measures (PAM) data product is designed to improve understanding of the geography of poverty in the United States. This report contains historical and technical documentation from the November 2022 version of PAM. Examples provided in this report are from 1960 through 2019, but the lessons will be applicable to PAM data in the future. PAM includes four measures of poverty: high, extreme, persistent, and the newly developed measure of enduring poverty. The methodology for the 2022 version of PAM incorporates reliability metrics to account for margin of error of the underlying data. The methodology also uniquely includes comparable U.S. county and census tract-level geography for all measures and data years (except for census tracts in 1960, given limited tract geography prior to 1970)
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In the included literature, regions with fewer documented pathway programs, such as parts of the Midwest and the South, coincide with states characterized by higher proportions of immigrant, English language learners, rural, and economically disadvantaged populations.
“In the included literature, regions with fewer documented pathway programs, such as parts of the Midwest and the South, also coincide with states characterized by higher proportions of immigrant, English language learners (ELL), rural, and economically disadvantaged populations (Davis et al., 2023;Farrigan & Sanders, 2024).”
From Pathway to Medicine and Health Programs Revisited: Outcomes and Institutional Adaptations in Greater Philadelphia and Beyond (2026) · cites this paper as Farrigan & Sanders, 2024
The Additional Technical Details section (page not provided) reports that persistent poverty was more common in nonmetropolitan than metropolitan counties, supporting a limited connection between rural areas and economic disadvantage. It does not establish that states in the Midwest or South with fewer documented pathway programs have higher proportions of immigrant, ELL, rural, and economically disadvantaged populations; the copy does not address pathway programs or ELL populations. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Cromartie, J., & Parker, T. (2014). Population shifts across U.S. nonmetropolitan regions. In Bailey, C., Jensen, L., & Ranson, E. (Eds.), Rural America in a globalizing world: Problems and prospects for the 2010s. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press.
- Ellen, I. G., Mijanovich, T., & Dillman, K.-N. (2001). Neighborhood effects on health: Exploring the links and assessing the evidence. Journal of Urban Affairs, 23(3-4), 391-408.
- Eriksson, K. L., Hjalmarsson, R., Lindquist, M. J., & Sandberg, A. (2015). The importance of family background and neighborhood effects as determinants of crime. Journal of Population Economics, 29(1), 219-262.
- Fisher, G. (1992). The development and history of the poverty thresholds. Social Security Bulletin, 55(4), 3-14.
- Fuguitt, G. V., & Beale, C. L. (1978). Population trends of nonmetropolitan cities and villages in subregions of the United States. Demography, 15(4), 605-620.
- Galster, G. (2002). An economic efficiency analysis of deconcentrating poverty populations. Journal of Housing Economics, 11(4), 303-329.
- Galster, G. (2003). Investigating behavioral impacts of poor neighborhoods: Towards new data and analytic strategies. Housing Studies, 18(3), 893-914.
- Gans, H. (2010). Concentrated poverty: A critical analysis. Challenge, 53(3), pp. 82-96.
- Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2003). Moving to opportunity: An experimental study of neighborhood effects on mental health. American Journal of Public Health, 93(9), 1576-1582.
- Levy, B., Owens, A., & Sampson, R. J. (2019). The varying effects of neighborhood disadvantage on college graduation: Moderating and mediating mechanisms. Sociology of Education, 92(3), 269-292.
- Misturelli, F., & Heffernan, C. (2010). The concept of poverty: A synchronic perspective. Progress in Development Studies, 10(1), 35-58.
- Morrill, R., Cromartie, J., & Hart, G. (1999). Metropolitan, urban, and rural commuting areas: Toward a better picture of the United States' settlement system. Urban Geography 20(8), 727-748.
- Beginning with nonmetropolitan county measures only, then expanded to nationwide county coverage. 1979 Persistent low-income counties in nonmetropolitan America, defined by relatively low-income using three data periods (1950, 1959, and 1969) spanning 20 years, with comparison to income levels in 1975 (Davis, 1979). 1985 Publications (e.g., Ross & Green, 1985; Bender et al., 1985) defining persistent poverty counties by per capita family income in the lowest quintile among all nonmetropolitan counties using four data periods (spanning 30 years), including 1950, 1959, 1969, and 1979. The measure is part of a set of county classifications, which are the seminal publication of what is also known as the USDA, ERS County Typology Codes. 1994 Methodological and data update to the prior persistent poverty county type. Persistent poverty is defined by an Official Poverty Measure poverty rate of 20 percent or more in each of the years 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990 (Cook & Hady, 1993;
- Cook & Mizer, 1994) 2004 Using the 1994 methodology, the persistent poverty county type is updated using Decennial Census data for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. 2009 A persistent child poverty county classification was added to the County Typology Codes. The classification is defined by poverty rates of 20 percent or more for related children in each year 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. 2015 The persistent poverty and persistent child poverty classifications are updated, continuing to use the 1994 methodology but with a change in data source for the most current year: 1980, 1990, and 2000 Decennial Census data and 2007-11 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Contemporary poverty measures era 9 Expansion of the persistent-poverty measures era approach to include additional poverty area measures and geographic scales. 9 Change in persistent-poverty area methodology to include data reliability metrics. 2022 The Poverty Area Measures (PAM) data product seminal publication includes four measures (high, extreme, persistent, and enduring) at two comparable geographic scales (county and census tract) spanning decennial data years (approximately) from 1960 to 2019.
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Bright, D., Hughes, S., & Muir, R. (2026) · Education Sciences · doi:10.3390/educsci16010170 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Farrigan, T., Sanders, A., & United States Department of Agriculture, E. R. S.
- ORCID
- Farrigan, Tracey
- Published
- 2024-07
- OpenAlex
- W4406240545
- Cited by
- 5
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2
- Type
- report
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- ageconsearch.umn.edu
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- Economic Research Service
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Income, Poverty, and Inequality
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › demographic modeling and climate adaptation
- Keywords
- geography of poverty, extreme poverty, poverty persistence, poverty measurement, margin of error, reliability measures, county-level poverty
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