IS CALIFORNIA POORER THAN MISSISSIPPI?

[Geee]

Human Events:

SACRAMENTO — Driving through the Mississippi delta from Tunica-area casinos to Jackson a few months ago, I saw few signs of the grinding poverty that was ubiquitous during my first visit there in the ‘80s. The shacks and “sugar ditch” — an infamous open sewer that highlighted the area’s plight — were gone, but the Magnolia State still looks poor by California standards.

 

Yet California’s real poverty rate is a nation’s-worst 22 percent, according to a new report by researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Can this be true?

 

That’s not where the counterintuitive conclusions end. Many inland California cities are well-known bastions of joblessness and despair. But the use of a new California Poverty Measure (CPM) rather than traditional Census standards concludes the poorest spots are in California’s coastal metropolises.