美联储-县级收入定义对低收入社区分析的适用性（英）-2025

Summary

This paper evaluates the suitability of a county-level income definition for analyzing lower-income communities. Using publicly available data, the authors define income quartiles based on population-weighted median household incomes, with the Bottom Quartile representing the lowest 25% of the population. The definition's robustness is examined across different geographies, income adjustments for cost-of-living, and economic indicators.

Key findings include:

• County-level data effectively captures economic disparities, with lower-income counties exhibiting higher unemployment, lower educational attainment, and lower credit scores compared to higher-income counties.
• Adjusting for cost-of-living (using Regional Price Parities) does not substantially improve the identification of disadvantaged communities.
• Broader geographic units (like commuting zones) and finer units (like census tracts) show similar trends in capturing economic differences, with some exceptions (e.g., homeownership rates).
• The definition performed well in analyzing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on financial distress, showing that relief measures helped, but lower-income counties experienced smaller improvements.

The Bottom Quartile classification is most similar straightforward definitions used in initiatives like Economic Tracker and Equitable Growth indicators. The paper concludes that for analyses where data is unavailable at finer geographies, county-level income groups provide a reasonable and reproducible approach to studying economic conditions across communities, though caution is needed for certain indicators (e.g., homeownership) that vary less at this level.