Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Dynamics of State and Scientific Classification

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This project examines the construction, use, and effects of the official U.S. poverty measure over time. Federally instituted fifty years ago, the poverty measure classifies who is poor and enables the state, social scientists, and society to calculate U.S. poverty rates and analyze poverty over time. Prior to its development and official adoption, no standard methodology existed. Today, the measure underlies not only social policy and poverty research, but also national discourse on poverty. This study makes two empirical contributions. First, the study identifies the processes through which the poverty measure was first developed and used during the War on Poverty era. Second, the study examines how the poverty measure, as an official classification and a statistical standard, has both facilitated and constrained a growing infrastructure of poverty knowledge systems and practices, particularly in government and social science. Project findings will be relevant to those on the forefront of understanding and alleviating poverty, especially decision makers, federal agencies, researchers, and antipoverty organizations. This project draws on archival materials, public records, technical files, official reports, existing oral histories, and original interviews, addressing the 1950s through today. Research focuses on the state and social science organizations and actors that have been most central in creating, using, justifying, and evaluating the official poverty measure. Attention is paid to discourses, strategies, logics, and decision-making processes. Overall, this project and resultant findings contribute to scholarship on classification, institutional change and durability, and processes of knowledge production at the state-science nexus.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.