alt Hacker News> In particular it seems weird that only we had a massive change during COVID.
It is not weird if you were old enough to be aware of the news during that time. Poor people in the US suddenly coming into money and being lifted out of poverty thanks to COVID stimulus checks was front and center in the news cycle as it was happening. The other countries noted did not follow the same "hand out free money" approach. Their safety nets were built around maintaining continuity during COVID.
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> It is not weird if you were old enough to be aware of the news during that time. Poor people in the US suddenly coming into money and being lifted out of poverty thanks to COVID stimulus checks was front and center in the news cycle as it was happening.
A lot was written about the stimulus checks but they were so small to not matter. A $1200 check isn't going to suddenly lift a lot of people out of poverty and keep them there, even though it could be make-or-break for a few selected cases.
The bigger change was that the American economy was basically turbocharged by all of the interventions going on. Remember "The Great Resignation" when everyone was changing jobs because all the companies were hiring as fast as they could? It was an ideal time to move your way into a better position in the job market.
Even if we take a face value the assertion that a 1200 one time check raised so many people out of poverty, it seems incredibly difficult to believe that single check for that single time was enough to change this "average poverty" value from 2x the other countries being referenced to not only less than half of that value, but also below 2 of the 3 comparative counties in the same time period AND 60% of the value in 1990 where the US was supposedly running equal with the comparative countries. Looking at the article graphs, none of the comparative countries see even a blip in their trends during the same time period. For that to make sense, especially in light of the rest of the article, it seems like a handful of things would have to be true:
1) That all of the effects of America's wealth inequality on American poverty could be made up for simply by giving everyone a thousand dollars a year. Not even UBI proponents are that optimistic.
2) That nothing any of the 3 comparative countries did or did not do during a massive global pandemic did anything to alter the relative poverty levels of their populations in the slightest
3) That the major economic crashes and recessions over the last few decades have actually improved American average poverty (notice that the US rate dips for the beginnings of the dot com crash, 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, despite none of those coming with government stimulus checks.
This measurement might be have something interesting to say, but I'm not sure it's saying what is being claimed. It feels more like they've found a more volatile measure of the US economy and stock market than of poverty.