Erin Troland, Isabella Agnes, Ellie Dries, Jessica Liu, Zofsha Merchant, Fatimah Shaalan, Michelle Tran, Anna Tranfaglia, and Douglas WebberThis 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.
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