University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Beneath the poverty line during the Great Depression: The measurement and demographic composition of poverty in 1939

Barrington, Linda

This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/23819

Description

Title
Beneath the poverty line during the Great Depression: The measurement and demographic composition of poverty in 1939
Author(s)
Barrington, Linda
Issue Date
1991
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Atack, Jeremy
Department of Study
  • History, United States
  • Economics, History
  • Sociology, Demography
Discipline
  • History, United States
  • Economics, History
  • Sociology, Demography
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • History, United States
  • Economics, History
  • Sociology, Demography
Language
eng
Abstract
  • This thesis presents estimates of the poverty rate and the demographic composition of the poor in 1939. The underpinning of these estimates, and the foundation of the thesis, is the construction of poverty lines for 1939. The trend of household poverty over the twenty year period 1939 to 1959 is also discussed. Official poverty statistics for the United States do not exist for years prior to 1959.
  • The 1939 poverty lines that I construct are estimated by applying the Orshansky method (the underpinning of the 1959 poverty line) to data from the period of interest. These data include the nutritional standards, and, the expenditure patterns and (age and gender) composition of households in the 1930s.
  • Because the official U.S. poverty lines are not defined strictly by the cost of a subsistence basket of goods, adjusting for cost of living alone introduces problems which include but are not confined to those of the standard indexing problem. The poverty lines that I produce are approximately half those obtained through backward extrapolation of the official 1959 poverty lines using the Consumer Price Index to adjust for cost of living. This striking contrast shows the degree to which backward extrapolation, adjusting solely for inflation, superimposes a more recent conceptual framework of poverty onto the historical analysis. Currently, the United States government revises yearly the official poverty line by adjusting for price changes, using the Consumer Price Index. My results strengthen, through historical analogy, the criticism of the annual U.S. poverty line revision.
  • In addition, I use the Public Use Micro Sample of the 1940 Population Census to analyze household poverty, estimating the poverty rate and the composition of poverty by gender, age, race, and farm status of the household head. I also use logit regression analysis to investigate the determinants of household poverty in 1939. The trend of poverty over the period 1939-1959 is influenced greatly by the method of poverty line construction. Feminization of poverty between 1939 and 1959 is evident in my poverty rate estimates but not in those produced using the CPI-indexed poverty lines.
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23819
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 1991 Barrington, Linda

Owning Collections

Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations and Theses - Economics