California Poverty Rate Still High

Despite slight improvements, the poverty rate in California remains high, affecting children and people of color most significantly, according to a recent California Poverty Measure report, published by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

The California Poverty Measure, which takes into account housing costs and cost of living, found that 17.8% "of Californians live on resources below a very basic level of well-being," Sarah Bohn, the nonprofit think tank's director of research and a senior fellow, tells U.S. News. And though not everyone is living in poverty, nearly one in five Californians are riding the line.

Compared to adults age 18-64 (17.1%) and those age 65 and older (18.5%), children are affected most, with 19.3% of children living in poverty, according to the report.

People of color are also disproportionately affected. While 12.5% of whites lived in poverty in 2017, 23.6% of Latinos were living in poverty. The poverty rates of African Americans (17.6%) and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders (16.4%) were also higher than those of whites.

But out of the nearly seven million Californians in poverty in 2017, 44.9% had "at least one family member reported working full time for the entire year," according to the report.

Although California's poverty rate declined 1.6 percentage points from 2016 to 2017, it remains higher than the national average of 12.3%. "It sounds like a small change," says Bohn, "but poverty rates change very slowly."

"This is the largest reduction we've seen since we created the California Poverty Measure in 2011," she says.

Social safety net programs are in place to help ease the burden, including the Earned Income Tax Credits; CalFresh (California's main food assistance program); CalWORKs (cash assistance for families with children); the Child Tax Credit; Supplemental Security Income; General Assistance; federal housing subsidies; the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; and school meals. These social safety net programs kept an estimated 7.1% of Californians out of poverty in 2017, according to the report.

But the impact of such programs varies across the state. El Dorado County, for example, had the lowest poverty rate (10.7%), while Los Angeles County (23%) and Santa Barbara County (22%) had the highest rates. Without the programs, poverty rates would be even higher, particularly in inland and Northern areas of the state, according to the report.

While it's difficult to pinpoint the sole causes for such high numbers, some believe the state's high cost of living is a critical factor. The official poverty line doesn't take into account state-specific factors, such as housing costs and other critical family expenses, the report said.