Improving Equitable Representation in Program Eligibility Data

Tracey Farrigan
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Mariya Shcheglovitova
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official positions or policies of the Economic Research Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of Policy Development and Research, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the U.S. Government.

Persistent poverty is used as an indicator across federal agencies for designating areas as eligible for programs serving regions of embedded poverty. This article tests various methods for incorporating margins of error (MOEs) in the designation of persistent poverty areas and evaluates the outcomes of including MOEs in eligibility metrics for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Distressed Cities and Persistent Poverty Technical Assistance program. The study finds that when MOEs are used in persistent poverty metrics to exclude census tracts with low MOE reliability, there is no substantial change in counties and incorporated census places that serve persistent poverty census tracts. However, when MOEs are used as an inclusive metric for measuring persistent poverty, there is an increase in low-population areas included in program eligibility. Furthermore, the study finds that using MOEs to include areas in program eligibility increases the representation of underserved populations as defined by race, ethnicity, and poverty status.