A couple of weeks before the election, the Kansas Department for Children and Families issued a press release that poverty in the state fell almost two and a half percent under Gov. Sam Brownback.
Brownback wasted no time incorporating those figures into the narrative of his success as governor.
“And just yesterday, poverty rates going down in the state of Kansas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau,” said Brownback at the gubernatorial debate in Wichita. “We are moving in the right direction and getting things done."
But the poverty rate information was wrong.
The census bureau follows poverty levels two ways: the official three-year average, which looks only at income, and a newer, more sophisticated Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM, which accounts for other factors that influence buying power. It’s also a three–year average.
Between 2011 and 2013 in Kansas the official poverty rate declined a little, from 14.5 percent to 14.1 percent. In the meantime, the SPM increased a little, from 11.5 percent to 11.8 percent — about a wash.
But instead of tracking either of the measurements over time, the Kansas Department for Children and Families looked at a graph that charted the difference between the two rates currently. The department took the current difference between the two rates (14.1-11.8=2.3) and sent out a press release declaring that poverty had plunged by 2.3 percent.
Department spokesman Teresa Freed says there was no intent to mislead.
“It was an error, it was a mistake,” explains Freed. “But it was an issue that we detected.”
A reporter for the Kansas Health Institute pointed out the mistake, and asked about it. The department admitted to that one reporter that there was a problem, but never sent a correction to the rest of the media.
