According to recent polls, California’s poverty rate has reached a high level of 23.5%, making it the poorest state in the nation. Washington DC trails behind Cali with 23.2% followed by Florida at a level of 19.5%. Recently, the Census Bureau revamped their style of measuring the poverty in states and the country as a whole. The poverty levels are mostly due to lower wage jobs and that it is harder to obtain food stamps and welfare in California. Read more below.
The recognition of California’s shockingly high poverty rate comes as a part of a shift in the way the Census Bureau measures its data. When the government began examining poverty back in the early 1960s, the line for determining who fell underneath the threshold was determined solely by looking at food costs.
In the decades since, there’s been increasing criticism this benchmark, as it doesn’t take into account tax rates and assistance programs such as food stamps, child care expenses and medical costs. In examining its most recent data, the Census Bureau considered these previously ignored factors, deemed the “supplemental poverty measure.”
