Measuring poverty in the midst of America’s covid-19 epidemic

AT FIRST, A remarkable thing happened in the midst of an epidemic and the lockdown-induced recession. Poverty declined in America. A gargantuan stimulus package, which sent most households one-off cheques worth $1,200 or more and topped up unemployment benefits by $600 a week, buoyed millions of families above the official poverty line (set at $21,720 for a family of three). Ariel Kalil, a developmental psychologist at the University of Chicago, was conducting a long-running study on parental behaviour among poor parents (mostly single mothers) of young children in the city before the pandemic struck. Surveying these parents again when families were somewhat protected from the economic shock, she found parents and children getting along better despite the added stress from job losses.