The authors introduce a quantitative measure of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the study of an individual's overlapping identities and the relative privileges or barriers that a society perceives for or attaches to a given intersectional identity. Using data from the Understanding America Study, the authors construct a Sociopolitical Power Scale (SPPS) that measures societal perceptions of relative power among intersectional identities. The authors then use the SPPS to test whether perceptions of intersectional identities differ from those of single-characteristic identities. They find some significant differences between intersectional and single-characteristic identities, and they discuss the implications of their findings and suggest directions for potential uses of the SPPS and for future research.

Poverty among older persons is not a static or permanent state; rather, older people move into and out of poverty just as do younger individuals. The authors document key factors associated with older Americans' poverty entry and exit patterns using a longitudinal data set for 2002–2018 from the Health and Retirement Study. They show that estimates from a model that accounts for nonrandom sample attrition because of the competing risks of death and other loss to survey follow-up differs somewhat from those of a hazard model that ignores those risks. Analysts using panel data to examine retirement security among older adults should investigate how sample attrition shapes empirical estimates.