“But the poverty count itself defines poverty as pre-tax money income from all sources being less than the poverty line. There is nothing in the definition about people who would have been poor but for government aid.”
That’s rather my point.
Every other country (as well as using a relative, not absolute, poverty measure) defines poverty after the efforts to alleviate poverty….after the influence of the tax and benefit systems. The US alone defines it as before the influence of the major poverty alleviation efforts.
The numbers are really rather large: add in Medicaid, EITC, Section 8 and the rest and there’s over $500 billion being spent on those 50 million ish people being defined as poor. While the money isn’t distributed evenly if it were that would mean that the mythical family of four, Mom,, Pop and two kinds, is getting $40k a year….which isn’t really, anyone’s definition of poverty.
So we don’t in fact know who is not now poor because of the aid they get….but that’s actually the one number we’re really interested in. How much more do we have to do to get rid of poverty?
As to hte best sources, well, there really isn’t one that’s updated. Back in, I think, 2004, the Census did run through the calculations of what the effects of poverty alleviation were. You’ll have to hunt to find it though, it’s been moved since the last time I looked it up. Also, it’s not updated. The general poverty rate fell to around 8% and the child poverty rate to something tiny, 2 or 3% as I recall it.
