Congratulations California, you’ve done it again — retained your title of having the highest level of poverty of any state. The Census Bureau released new economic data Tuesday, including both official poverty rates for 2022 and what are called “supplemental” rates. The former, based on formula several decades old, involves only a few basic factors and applies them to all states, regardless of their economic and sociological differences. Economists consider the official rates to be misleading because of their simplistic factors, but they remain in the law because they are the basis for many federal and state programs.
The nationwide official poverty rate released on Tuesday is 11.5% and California’s is virtually identical at 11.4%. Other states range from as high as 18.3% in New Mexico to as low as 7.1% in neighboring Utah — an anomaly that itself should warrant deeper investigation. More than a decade ago, those who study poverty persuaded the Census Bureau to adopt a more realistic method of gauging poverty, one that takes into account differentials of living costs and other factors. The “supplemental” rates are calculated on three years of data and California has held the top spot for a number of years, almost entirely because of its extraordinarily high costs of housing, utilities, fuel and other consumer needs.
Nationally, the new supplemental rate is 9.8% but once again California tops the states at 13.2 percent, more than a third higher than the national rate.
…
The Public Policy Institute of California has used a methodology similar to that of the Census Bureau to calculate poverty variations within the state and has found that in 2021 more than a quarter of Californians were living in poverty or near-poverty. The PPIC also found that the state’s highest level of functional poverty is in Los Angeles County, which has a huge underclass but very high housing costs. Lowest poverty rates are largely found in the San Francisco Bay Area, where high technology industry incomes are better able to cope with high housing costs.
The ultimate irony of California’s high poverty rate is that it’s a deep-blue state where all of the political power is held by left-leaning Democrats who profess to sympathize with the plight of the poor.
Democrats have controlled all statewide offices since the election of 2010. Except for 2-year pauses in both chambers, Democrats have controlled the State Legislature for more than half a century.