[Congressional Bills 105th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 131 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







105th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                 S. 131

To amend chapter 5 of title 13, United States Code, to require that any 
data relating to the incidence of poverty produced or published by the 
     Secretary of Commerce for subnational areas is corrected for 
           differences in the cost of living in those areas.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            January 21, 1997

Mr. Moynihan (for himself, Mr. Lieberman, and Mr. Jeffords) introduced 
the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee 
                        on Governmental Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To amend chapter 5 of title 13, United States Code, to require that any 
data relating to the incidence of poverty produced or published by the 
     Secretary of Commerce for subnational areas is corrected for 
           differences in the cost of living in those areas.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Poverty Data Correction Act of 
1997''.

SEC. 2. REQUIREMENT.

    (a) In General.--Chapter 5 of title 13, United States Code, is 
amended by adding after subchapter V the following:

                     ``SUBCHAPTER VI--POVERTY DATA

``Sec. 197. Correction of subnational data relating to poverty
    ``(a) Any data relating to the incidence of poverty produced or 
published by or for the Secretary for subnational areas shall be 
corrected for differences in the cost of living, and data produced for 
State and sub-State areas shall be corrected for differences in the 
cost of living for at least all States of the United States.
    ``(b) Data under this section shall be published in 1997 and at 
least every second year thereafter.
``Sec. 198. Development of State cost-of-living index and State poverty 
              thresholds
    ``(a) To correct any data relating to the incidence of poverty for 
differences in the cost of living, the Secretary shall--
            ``(1) develop or cause to be developed a State cost-of-
        living index which ranks and assigns an index value to each 
        State using data on wage, housing, and other costs relevant to 
        the cost of living; and
            ``(2) multiply the Federal Government's statistical poverty 
        thresholds by the index value for each State's cost of living 
        to produce State poverty thresholds for each State.
    ``(b) The State cost-of-living index and resulting State poverty 
thresholds shall be published before September 30, 1998, for calendar 
year 1997 and shall be updated annually for each subsequent calendar 
year.''.
    (b) Conforming Amendment.--The table of sections for chapter 5 of 
title 13, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the 
following:

                     ``SUBCHAPTER VI--POVERTY DATA

``197. Correction of subnational data relating to poverty.
``198. Development of State cost-of-living index and State poverty 
                            thresholds.''.
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