Community News
Open dialogue among community members is an important part of successful advocacy. Take Action California believes that the more information and discussion we have about what's important to us, the more empowered we all are to make change.
Nearly a third of California’s households “struggle each month to meet basic needs,” largely because of the state’s high cost of living, a new study by United Ways of California concludes.
The study relies on what the organization calls a “real cost measure” that goes well beyond the Census Bureau’s official poverty measure, which dates back to the early 1960s and pegs California’s rate at just half of what the United Ways study found.
The organization’s methodology is, however, similar in thrust to an alternative poverty measure that includes all forms of income and is adjusted for the cost of living. By that measure, nearly a quarter of California’s 39 million residents are living in poverty.
The United Ways study is centered on a household budget “composed of costs all families much address, such as food, housing, transportation, child care, out-of-pocket health expenses and taxes.”
While overall, by that method, 31 percent of California’s families “lack income adequate to meet their basic needs,” the rates vary widely by ethnic group and locale.
Over half of Latino families fall under the United Ways poverty measure, as well as 40 percent of black families. White families (20 percent) and Asian-American households 28 percent) are better off.
Geographically, poverty rates range from as high as 80 percent in inner city Los Angeles to as low as 9 percent in suburban Contra Costa County.
The study identified housing costs as the major factor in poverty, with struggling families spending over half of their incomes for shelter, with rents of two-bedroom housing units ranging from $584 a month in Modoc County to $1,905 in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.
Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article27256111.html
California still has - by a
huge margin - the highest poverty rate of any state under an alternative Census Bureau calculation that includes the cost of living.
The Census Bureau report,
issued Wednesday, says that nearly a quarter of California's 38 million
residents live in poverty by the alternative method - almost 9 million - and
the state's 23.8 percent rate is approached only by Washington, D.C.'s 22.7
percent.
Among other states, the
second highest alternative poverty rate is found in Nevada at 19.8 percent
while the lowest rates are found in Iowa (8.6 percent) and Wyoming (9.2
percent). Nationally, the alternative rate is 16 percent.while higher than the national official rate
of 15.1 percent, it is surpassed by those of many other states.
The official rate is based
on half-century-old criteria that have been criticized as being obsolete,
leading the Census Bureau to develop the alternative method that uses broader
indices, including the cost of living. The official rate assumes, in essence,
that the cost of living is the same nationwide.
California scored the
highest rate during the Census Bureau's first report on the alternative method
and continues with that dubious title. A few weeks ago, the Public Policy
Institute of California released a report using methodology similar to the
Census Bureau's alternative and came up with similar results.
The official rate is used
for a wide variety of federal and state programs. Were the alternative method
to become the official one, there would be huge upheavals in those programs,
possibly meaning a big jump in federal aid to California.
PHOTO: Kazoo Yang,
31, spent most of the day packing up her possessions as Sacramento police
officers evict 150 homeless people from an illegal campground along the
American River. The Sacramento Bee/Manny Crisostomo
via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/california-still-has-highest-poverty-rate-under-new-method.html
