Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Dynamics of State and Scientific Classification

本项目考察了长期以来美国官方贫困衡量标准的构建、使用和影响。美国联邦政府在50年前制定了贫困衡量标准，对穷人进行分类，使州政府、社会科学家和社会能够计算美国的贫困率，并分析长期的贫困状况。其发展和官方采用之前,没有标准的方法存在。如今，这一指标不仅是社会政策和贫困研究的基础，也是全国关于贫困的讨论的基础。本研究有两个实证贡献。首先，该研究确定了贫困衡量标准在向贫困宣战时期首次发展和使用的过程。第二,研究探讨如何贫困指标,作为官方分类和统计标准,具有促进和制约日益增长的基础设施贫困的知识体系和实践,特别是在政府和社会科学。项目研究结果将与那些站在了解和减轻贫困前沿的人们息息相关，尤其是决策者、联邦机构、研究人员和反贫困组织。该项目利用档案材料、公共记录、技术文件、官方报告、现有口述历史和原始访谈，从20世纪50年代到今天。研究的重点是在创建、使用、证明和评估官方贫困指标方面发挥最核心作用的国家和社会科学组织和行动者。重点是话语，策略，逻辑和决策过程。总的来说，这个项目和最终的发现有助于分类、制度变迁和持久性，以及国家-科学联系下的知识生产过程的学术研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.