shown in Chapter 2, the Census counted only about one-third of the total of all government transfer payments as income, but among those families that they classified as poor, Census counted only 12 percent of the total transfer payments they received. This lower percentage of counted transfers among the poor occurs because the vast majority of the uncounted transfer payments have income criteria that target them specifically toward the poor, such as food stamps, the refundable portion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, and most public housing subsidies. Most of the uncounted programs
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