For example, government transfers reduce the share of New Yorkers that fall below 50% of the poverty line by 10 percentage points (18% to 8%), moving 886,000 people above the 50% threshold, but only move 378,000 above the 200% threshold, just a 5 percentage point decrease (from 61% to 56%). This would not necessarily be a policy problem if the data suggested people living above the poverty line were able to afford their needs without government supports, but as the previous sections demonstrated, that’s not the case. Many safety net and income transfer policies are targeted only towards those with the fewest resources. As a result, many New Yorkers in the 100% to 200% range are ineligible for government transfers like the EITC and programs like SNAP, despite evidence that shows these households still experi- ence food and other forms of hardship. Percent of the overall population falling below different levels of the SPM poverty line before and after government transfers (2022) Figure 3.3
Pre-Government Transfers
Post-Government Transfers
378,000 PEOPLE 7% REDUCTION
569,000 PEOPLE
80%
14% REDUCTION
839,000 PEOPLE
70%
61%
60%
56%
30% REDUCTION
886,000 PEOPLE
49%
50%
42%
59% REDUCTION
40%
33%
30%
23%
18%
20%
10%
8%
0%
Below 50% SPM
Below 100% SPM
Below 150% SPM
Below 200% SPM
Source: Annual Poverty Tracker survey data, second through fifth Poverty Tracker cohorts.
Figure 3.4 shows the relative reduction in the share of adults and children falling below different levels of the poverty line after accounting for resources from government transfers. Again, we see that the effects of government transfers decrease at higher levels of the income distribution. Policies reduce deep poverty (or falling below half the poverty line) among adults and children by over half (55% and 68%, respectively), while policies only reduce the population falling below twice the poverty line by a small margin (6% for adults and 11% for children). These results also highlight the critical role that government transfers play in providing assistance to children: government transfers lead to larger relative reductions in poverty for children com- pared to adults at every point in the distribution.
THE STATE OF POVERTY AND DISADVANTAGE IN NEW YORK CITY 31
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