S. 3756: Poverty Statistics Enhancement Act

This bill, known as the Poverty Statistics Enhancement Act, aims to improve how poverty is measured in the United States by introducing a new methodology that incorporates the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) distributional analysis of household income. Below is a summary of its key components:

Definitions and Scope

• Administering Agency: Refers to any government agency at the federal, state, or local level responsible for assessing income, collecting revenue, or managing benefit programs.
• Director: The Director of the Bureau of the Census is in charge of implementing the new poverty measurement methodology.
• Earned Income: Includes wages, tips, self-employment income, and various forms of financial returns such as interest, dividends, rents, capital gains, and employer-paid benefits.
• Government Transfer Payments: Encompasses any assistance funded by government entities that is not payment for services, like unemployment benefits and social security assistance.

New Poverty Measurement Methodology

• The Director must develop a new methodology within one year of the bill's enactment, which will supplement the current Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM).
• This new method will calculate an individual's income as the sum of earned income and government transfers, minus taxes owed.

Data Collection and Reporting

• Federal and state agencies must provide necessary data to the Director within specified timelines, aided by previous data and statistical methodologies to ensure reliability.
• The Director must report to Congress on the implementation of this new methodology, including the quality of data collected and the resulting poverty statistics.

Protection of Information

• The bill includes provisions to safeguard personally identifiable information collected during this process, maintaining strict confidentiality standards.
• Access to this information will be restricted and controlled, with severe penalties for unauthorized access or disclosure.

Stats Publication

• All new poverty measurement statistics must reflect the new methodology in future publications and data sets, facilitating a comparison with previous measures.

Implementation Timeline

• The new methodology must be implemented within one year of the bill's enactment.
• Reports on data availability and poverty measures must be delivered to Congress according to set timelines to monitor compliance and effectiveness.

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