THE CHRONICITY OF POVERTY - EVIDENCE FROM THE PSID, 1968-1987

An essential result from the poverty research of the 1970s was an indication that much poverty was episodic, in contrast to then-conventional stereotypes about the poor. However, recent treatments of poverty in the U.S. have emphasized the increase of chronic poverty. This study tests the hypothesis of increasing intragenerational chronicity by using a series of multiyear windows that track income experiences of households from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1968 to 1987. Results show an increase in the incidence of chronic poverty after 1973, with an acceleration in the early 1980s. Thereafter, as the annual poverty rate begins to decline, chronicity levels off at rates consistent with the heightened chronicity observed during the late 1970s. As expected, the trends are sharper among blacks and women than among whites and men, and are sharpest of all among black female-headed households.