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> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income Is this the same definition of poverty used by the federal government for all other

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income Is this the same definition of poverty used by the federal government for all other poverty-related statistics? If not, it sure is interesting that the study would come up with it's own definition. Unfortunately the links study appears to be behind a Jama pay wall, I'd love to see how they came up with that and whether it was defined before the study was conducted. > The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought about a sharp increase in U.S. poverty as millions of people got sick, were thrown out of work, and lost health insurance. Also interesting that the issues here would still be categorized as caused by poverty rather than the pandemic and our pandemic response. Poverty contributes plenty of issues that can lead to an early death, but if the study is attempting to roll those up and label the proximla cause of death as poverty how is the increase in poverty and related deaths not rolled up as an effect of the pandemic itself?

bombcar 3y ago
I can't read the firey letters, but it seems it's somewhere in here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/19/2023-00885/annual-update-of-the-hhs-poverty-guidelines https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/19/2023-00... The "federal poverty guidelines" are kind of useless on their own - you need the percentage adjustments that various states apply to handle the incredible cost of living differences that exist.
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  I can't say if it's in the paywalled study or just the article, but multiple stats and links used point back to government poverty data which would be using a different definition than the study. At a minimum that would be sloppy journalism, but in my opinion any researcher should see that coming and use the standard definition that the study is clearly attempting to compare against. It really doesn't seem to make sense to redefine such a loaded term even if the federal definition is tedious to work with.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Agreed, the "poverty line" is such a well-defined term of art that you shouldn't even consider using the word unless you're referencing it (which can be fine to do the "200% of" math because that's often still quite low). In this case it sounds like they'd be better off defining something else because "the half of the people below the median" has some obviously glaring issues right off the bat.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      While I mostly agree, note that the definition in the study is not "the half of people below the median", it's "all the people earning less than half of the median income".
      - flagrant_taco 3y ago
        It is the national median though, which completely loses the fine-grained detail built into the national poverty statistics that adjust for cost of living at the state level. I don't think I would actually say the federal metric itself is particularly useful, but so much existing data depends on it that it seems crazy to reinvent the meaning of what the poverty line is for one specific study.
prepend 3y ago
> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income This seems odd as poverty is a function of households, not individual income. Half the median for a single person is very different from half the media. For a single person with 9 kids. Or two people living together. And why half the median? Why not first quartile or quintile? This is pretty complicated to measure, so it seems unusual to not use Census’ Official Poverty Measure [0] that has many factors and is based on family size. I would expect discussion around why they created their own measure and didn’t use Census. [0] https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc...
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  That's more precise but also requires much more information. Recently I ran through that with a few different scenarios and most of them did come out really close to half of median. I can see why they would go with that number for simplicity and to reduce dependence on specific data and avoid accounting for reporting error in the data.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Definitely, it’s harder to use. But I’d rather not do analysis than do wrong analysis. If I can’t measure poverty correctly, then using a simple number isn’t useful to generalize and make conclusions. And I certainly wouldn’t want to target interventions. There’s a reason why it’s complicated.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      > If I can’t measure poverty correctly, then using a simple number isn’t useful to generalize Why not? It can be good enough to identify a pattern to focus more precise study on. "I'd rather not understand this at all if we can't have a perfect understanding" is a harsh and anti-science stance on this imo.
      - 3y ago
giraffe_lady 3y ago
The federal "poverty line" definition is notoriously arbitrary and based on a model of household expenses that hasn't been valid for at least a generation. It's almost completely useless for anything except punitively restricting access to aid. > Also interesting that the issues here would still be categorized as caused by poverty rather than the pandemic and our pandemic response. This is what they're doing. "The pandemic" is a human social and political phenomenon. So is poverty. There's not going to be a clear line between the two either broadly or in many specific cases. Someone who caught covid at work knowing they were immunocompromised but needed the money, did they die of pandemic or poverty? Someone who died of preventable covid complications but couldn't access adequate healthcare because of money? Approaching it as "pandemic, mediated by poverty" is a useful lens and people are also studying it that way. But "poverty, mediated by pandemic" is also useful and in a different way and that's what this one went with.
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  > Someone who caught covid at work knowing they were immunocompromised but needed the money, did they did our pandemic or poverty? When looking at aggregate statistics one of examples can't be considered, the data simply isn't there. Also for this example I believe the answer would be that the fictious person would have died with covid and poverty, notof either one. > Someone who died of preventable covid complications but couldn't access adequate Healthcare because of money? Similar issues here. The study want designed to look into these concerns and the data just isn't there. In this example it's also be impossible to know if the person does of preventable complications, at best you could say they died with complications that are often treatable or preventable. My point with regards to this study was simply that they are looking at people who died of drug overdoses, weather exposure, hunger, etc and rolling that up to say they died from poverty as those issues are often linked to poverty. I'm arguing that they would have to make a similar decision for any poverty caused by the pandemic and pandemic response, they wouldn't have been poor if not for the pandemic just like the study is assuming someone wouldn't have died of not for being below their definition of poverty. If a study gets to pick and choose whether they want to pin the blame on covid or poverty then the data really is useless. Solid data backed up by empirical evidence showing causation, which is what this study attempts to do, is directional and can't be flipped around. It's worth noting here the article is calling poverty a cause of death, not a contributing factor. They are making the claim that it is directly causal, in which case the order isn't reversable.

bombcar 3y ago

I can't read the firey letters, but it seems it's somewhere in here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/19/2023-00885/annual-update-of-the-hhs-poverty-guidelines https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/19/2023-00... The "federal poverty guidelines" are kind of useless on their own - you need the percentage adjustments that various states apply to handle the incredible cost of living differences that exist.

flagrant_taco 3y ago
I can't say if it's in the paywalled study or just the article, but multiple stats and links used point back to government poverty data which would be using a different definition than the study. At a minimum that would be sloppy journalism, but in my opinion any researcher should see that coming and use the standard definition that the study is clearly attempting to compare against. It really doesn't seem to make sense to redefine such a loaded term even if the federal definition is tedious to work with.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Agreed, the "poverty line" is such a well-defined term of art that you shouldn't even consider using the word unless you're referencing it (which can be fine to do the "200% of" math because that's often still quite low). In this case it sounds like they'd be better off defining something else because "the half of the people below the median" has some obviously glaring issues right off the bat.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    While I mostly agree, note that the definition in the study is not "the half of people below the median", it's "all the people earning less than half of the median income".
    - flagrant_taco 3y ago
      It is the national median though, which completely loses the fine-grained detail built into the national poverty statistics that adjust for cost of living at the state level. I don't think I would actually say the federal metric itself is particularly useful, but so much existing data depends on it that it seems crazy to reinvent the meaning of what the poverty line is for one specific study.

prepend 3y ago

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income This seems odd as poverty is a function of households, not individual income. Half the median for a single person is very different from half the media. For a single person with 9 kids. Or two people living together. And why half the median? Why not first quartile or quintile? This is pretty complicated to measure, so it seems unusual to not use Census’ Official Poverty Measure [0] that has many factors and is based on family size. I would expect discussion around why they created their own measure and didn’t use Census. [0] https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc...

giraffe_lady 3y ago
That's more precise but also requires much more information. Recently I ran through that with a few different scenarios and most of them did come out really close to half of median. I can see why they would go with that number for simplicity and to reduce dependence on specific data and avoid accounting for reporting error in the data.
- prepend 3y ago
  Definitely, it’s harder to use. But I’d rather not do analysis than do wrong analysis. If I can’t measure poverty correctly, then using a simple number isn’t useful to generalize and make conclusions. And I certainly wouldn’t want to target interventions. There’s a reason why it’s complicated.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    > If I can’t measure poverty correctly, then using a simple number isn’t useful to generalize Why not? It can be good enough to identify a pattern to focus more precise study on. "I'd rather not understand this at all if we can't have a perfect understanding" is a harsh and anti-science stance on this imo.
    - 3y ago

giraffe_lady 3y ago

The federal "poverty line" definition is notoriously arbitrary and based on a model of household expenses that hasn't been valid for at least a generation. It's almost completely useless for anything except punitively restricting access to aid. > Also interesting that the issues here would still be categorized as caused by poverty rather than the pandemic and our pandemic response. This is what they're doing. "The pandemic" is a human social and political phenomenon. So is poverty. There's not going to be a clear line between the two either broadly or in many specific cases. Someone who caught covid at work knowing they were immunocompromised but needed the money, did they die of pandemic or poverty? Someone who died of preventable covid complications but couldn't access adequate healthcare because of money? Approaching it as "pandemic, mediated by poverty" is a useful lens and people are also studying it that way. But "poverty, mediated by pandemic" is also useful and in a different way and that's what this one went with.

flagrant_taco 3y ago
> Someone who caught covid at work knowing they were immunocompromised but needed the money, did they did our pandemic or poverty? When looking at aggregate statistics one of examples can't be considered, the data simply isn't there. Also for this example I believe the answer would be that the fictious person would have died with covid and poverty, notof either one. > Someone who died of preventable covid complications but couldn't access adequate Healthcare because of money? Similar issues here. The study want designed to look into these concerns and the data just isn't there. In this example it's also be impossible to know if the person does of preventable complications, at best you could say they died with complications that are often treatable or preventable. My point with regards to this study was simply that they are looking at people who died of drug overdoses, weather exposure, hunger, etc and rolling that up to say they died from poverty as those issues are often linked to poverty. I'm arguing that they would have to make a similar decision for any poverty caused by the pandemic and pandemic response, they wouldn't have been poor if not for the pandemic just like the study is assuming someone wouldn't have died of not for being below their definition of poverty. If a study gets to pick and choose whether they want to pin the blame on covid or poverty then the data really is useless. Solid data backed up by empirical evidence showing causation, which is what this study attempts to do, is directional and can't be flipped around. It's worth noting here the article is calling poverty a cause of death, not a contributing factor. They are making the claim that it is directly causal, in which case the order isn't reversable.