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Working Paper
Suitability of a County-Level Income Definition for Analysis of Lower-Income Communities
This paper examines the costs and benefits of using a straightforward county-level income definition in the classification and study of lower-income communities. A definition based on population-weighted distribution of county-level median household incomes does a good job of identifying the most economically disadvantaged communities across a wide range of indicators. We show robustness to the use of different thresholds, levels of geography, and cost-of-living adjustments.