The fact that about 23 percent of state residents are barely getting by has helped fuel the push for a much higher minimum wage and prompted renewed interest in affordable housing programs. It’s also put the focus on regional economic disparities, especially the fact that Silicon Valley and San Francisco are the primary engine of state prosperity.

While the tech boom and the vast increase in housing prices it has triggered in the Bay Area are national news, prompting think pieces and thoughtful analyses, the poverty picture in the state’s largest population center isn’t covered nearly as fully. Although the fact is plain in Census Bureau data, it’s not commonly understood that Los Angeles County is the capital of U.S. poverty. A 2013 study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality based on 2011 data found 27 percent of the county’s 10 million residents were impoverished, the highest figure in the state and the highest of any large metro area in the U.S. The study questioned long-held assumptions about poverty being worst in rural areas.

But there are reasons to think the rate in Los Angeles County is significantly higher than the 27 percent reported in 2013.

The first is that many surveys of poverty struggle to account for undocumented immigrants, who often work for cash and don’t show up in wage surveys. The Pew Research Service in 2009 estimated that undocumented individuals face poverty rates “nearly double” those of Americans in general. Los Angeles County has by far the most undocumented immigrants, estimated by PPIC to be 815,000 in 2013.

The second is that the cost of housing has surged in Los Angeles County over the past four years even as wages have stagnated. The average rent of an apartment countywide is expected to be $1,800 by year’s end, with the biggest percentage jump in poorer communities in the San Fernando Valley.

Poverty-related stress takes heavy toll

A summer report by Southern California Public Radio laid out a grim picture of the toll this mass poverty takes on the young.

New research shows the mere fact of being poor can affect kids’ brains, making it difficult for them to succeed in school.

 

Los Angeles public schools — where more than 80 percent of students live in poverty — illustrate the challenges for these students. …

 

Children living in poor neighborhoods are more likely to suffer traumatic incidents, like witnessing or being the victims of shootings, parental neglect or abuse. They also struggle with pernicious daily stressors, including food or housing insecurity, overcrowding and overworked or underemployed, stressed-out parents.

 

Untreated, researchers have found these events compound, affecting many parts of the body. Studies show chronic stress can change the chemical and physical structures of the brain.

 

“You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Dr. Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University.

 

Dendrites, which look like microscopic fingers, stretch off each brain cell to catch information.  Wellman’s studies in mice show that chronic stress causes these fingers to shrink, changing the way the brain works. She found deficiencies in the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain needed to solve problems, which is crucial to learning.

 

Other researchers link chronic stress to a host of cognitive effects, including trouble with attention, concentration, memory and creativity.

SCPR had a follow-up report that showed Los Angeles schools simply didn’t have the resources to help affected students in a comprehensive way.

Now a new UCLA study finds that of the 4 million adults in California who are 65 or older, 1.11 million struggle to make ends meet — an effective poverty rate of 28 percent. That’s more than triple the number of California elderly who were considered impoverished under standard federal measures. This is from the KPCC/PBS report:

More than 770,000 seniors in California aren’t making enough to get by but aren’t considered poor by the federal government, according to a UCLA health policy study that is challenging the definition of poverty. …

 

According to the study, about 340,000 Californians 65 years or older are considered poor based on the Federal Poverty Level, which makes them eligible for public assistance programs.

 

But in an analysis of 2009-2011 U.S. Census data, the researchers concluded that about 772,000 more seniors in the state could use the help but aren’t considered poor enough. She calls this group the “hidden poor.”

 

“They don’t have enough income to meet a minimally decent standard of living,” said study lead author Imelda Padilla-Frausto, a graduate student researcher at the Center for Health Policy Research.

‘Hidden poor’ in trailer parks fight for rent control

As with the jump in overall poverty rates in the 2012 alternative Census Bureau statistical review, elderly poverty rates are much higher than previously thought because of the high cost of living. UCLA explains its approach in its study:

Economic security requires that older adults have sufficient income to pay for basic housing, food, transportation, health care, and other necessary expenses. The Elder Index is an evidence-based approach that identifies the actual costs of those basic needs at the county level for renters, homeowners with a mortgage, and homeowners without a mortgage. …

 

Of the 4 million older adults age 65 and over in California in 2011, one out of three (38.4 percent) was part of an older couple living alone, one out of four (27 percent) was a single elder living alone, one out of 20 (5.5 percent) was part of an older couple housing adult children, one out of 30 (3.6 percent) was a single elder housing adult children, and less than 1 percent were grandparents raising grandchildren without the parents present.

A primary cause of economic insecurity among the elderly is their reliance on fixed incomes that can’t handle sudden increases in housing costs. This explains why trailer park communities with rent controls — and many renters among the “hidden poor” — are often involved in intense political fights in local governments.

California has nearly 5,000 trailer parks with nearly 1 million residents, according to a 2011 TIME report about trailer park owners’ war on what cities call “rent stabilization agreements.”

According to a website that offers resources to trailer-park residents in disputes with their landlords, 97 local governments around California put limits on how much rates can go up each year, from Alameda County to Yucaipa.

Elderly trailer-park voters are often eagerly courted by local politicians. They vote at higher rates than younger residents and form coalitions with other groups that have lost favor with city hall. In Oceanside, for example, trailer park residents and public safety unions have long fought with business interests and conservative Republicans for control of the City Council.

That’s according to a new study by the U.S. Census Bureau, “State Government Finances Summary: 2013. Economy-Wide Statistics Briefs: Public Sector.”

According to the summary by Dan Walters, “California contains 12.2 percent of the nation’s population but its state government accounted for 13.8 percent of all state spending in the 2012-13 fiscal year.”

Of course, California is an extremely expensive state. So the higher spending might be justified to pay for higher salaries for government workers.

Except a previous Census Bureau study found California has the nation’s highest poverty rate. So one reason non-government workers are so poor is their salaries are drained to support an above-average size of state and local government.

This is because no one wants to take positions sharply at odds with the media status quo. But on Friday, Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury-News did just that on state poverty.

For two years, the U.S. Census Bureau has been reporting that based on a new measure of poverty adjusted for cost of living, California has by far the nation’s highest poverty rate. But while I’ve written about this for the U-T San Diego’s editorial page, Dan Walters has referred to it in some columns and Chris Cadelago mentioned it in a Capitol Alert brief for the Sac Bee, the stat hasn’t become part of the mainstream California media narrative about life in the Golden State.

Why? That pack mentality.

I’ve whined a lot about Calefati over her coverage of the bullet train. She buys the Dan Richard myth that would-be contractors are potential investors, never looking at the contractors’ history, and doesn’t appear to have read the appellate court ruling on the bullet train that provides zero long-term relief from Prop 1A’s restrictions. But on poverty, she’s nailed it. From now on, it’s going to be awfully difficult for other reporters writing broadly about California quality of life to leave out the mass poverty angle.

Here’s a key part:

“By some measures, California seems to be doing really well, but these measures are deceptive,” said Jack Pitney, a political expert at Claremont McKenna College. “So much of the good fortune is being blown to the affluent — and a lot of Californians are getting left behind.”

The state’s official poverty rate of 14.9 percent is just slightly higher than the national average. It’s decreased from a high of 16.9 percent in 2011, yet it remains stubbornly higher than it was before the Great Recession began, according to U.S. Census data.

But those figures don’t tell the whole story. According to another set of Census statistics that takes the cost of living into account when calculating need, California’s poverty rate is 23.4 percent — the highest in the nation. …

Who’s indifferent to mass poverty? The gov

But Calefati doesn’t just point out how extreme poverty is. She notes how badly poor people have fared under the state budgets shaped by Gov. Jerry Brown. She cites program cuts and then offers this broad appraisal of how the gov thinks:

Brown, stemming in part from the former seminarian’s Jesuit background, also seems to have a distaste for handing out cash to able-bodied people. He has said that the investments he made in public education and subsidized health care for the poor are among the best ways to help people climb out of poverty.

“There’s no single measure of poverty and there’s certainly no single action — or government program — that will eliminate it, which is why the administration is moving on multiple fronts to help Californians in need,” said Evan Westrup, the governor’s chief spokesman. …

Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, said she appreciates Brown pushing for the minimum wage hike but argues that he has shied away from tackling the state’s poverty problem head-on.

“The governor likes to describe this state as a laboratory of innovation,” she added. “It’s the people who make California an innovator, not just the coast line and the palm trees. If we don’t invest in our children’s well-being, who will be left to innovate?”

But termed-out Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a liberal Sacramento Democrat who led the state Senate for six years, isn’t optimistic that social service spending in California will soon be the same again — as a coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats like Brown resist going on the kind of spending binge that led to the multibillion-dollar deficits.

“The thing about budget cuts is once they’re made it’s very difficult to restore them dollar for dollar,” he said. “It just is.”

That’s the last paragraph of Calefati’s story. Any journalism forensics technician will tell you the last graph of a long analysis is what the reporter (or line editor) thinks about the facts that have been presented.

A radical break with usual kumbaya coverage of Jerry

So here’s what the Merc News front page says: California is the poorest state in America, and Jerry Brown doesn’t care all that much.

What a remarkable difference from Brown’s (and the media’s) normal narrative of “California’s on the rebound! California’s got its mojo back!”

That narrative looks idiotic when the media actually report that due to high housing prices, California is the Mississippi of the 21st century.

But beginning in fall 2012, the bureau finally began providing such analysis in what it called a “supplemental” poverty analysis. In that report, the one that came out in 2013 and the one that came out last week, California had by a wide margin the highest poverty rate of any state. Here’s part of Dan Walters’ short take on it:

California continues to have – by far – the nation’s highest level of poverty under an alternative method devised by the Census Bureau that takes into account both broader measures of income and the cost of living.

Nearly a quarter of the state’s 38 million residents (8.9 million) live in poverty, a new Census Bureau report says, a level virtually unchanged since the agency first began reporting on the method’s effects.

Under the traditional method of gauging poverty, adopted a half-century ago, California’s rate is 16 percent (6.1 million residents), somewhat above the national rate of 14.9 percent but by no means the highest. That dubious honor goes to New Mexico at 21.5 percent.

But under the alternative method, California rises to the top at 23.4 percent while New Mexico drops to 16 percent and other states decline to as low as 8.7 percent in Iowa.

The supplemental poverty calculations put Mississippi’s poverty rate at 15.3 percent. So someone who lives in California is 35 percent more likely to be impoverished than someone who lives in Mississippi.

Mississippi spurs deep concern — CA, not so much

Will the California media ever forcefully point this out — like, yunno, the folks who have written about Mississippi? Here’s an example of the oh-my-god-it’s-awful treatment that Mississippi gets for its poverty, which is small compared to California’s:

Many families in Mississippi, one of the states where ChildFund works, live below the poverty line, presenting obstacles to children achieving happy and fulfilling lives. In 2013, the federal poverty level for a family of five is a yearly income of $27,570. As of January 2011, about 31 percent of the children living in Mississippi were considered poor, and included in that number were 14 percent living in extreme poverty, according to the Children’s Defense Fund. This means Mississippi has the highest child poverty rate in the nation.

Although there are many factors that can contribute to child abuse and neglect, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notes that many researchers feel there is a correlation between poverty and child mistreatment.Mississippi has historically seen both high poverty and child abuse rates.

In 2011, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that 7,883 Mississippi children were victims of abuse or neglect, which works out to a case of abuse or neglect every hour. Some children in Mississippi are unable to live with their biological parents for a variety of reasons. In 2011, about 3,320 children were in foster care, and about 50,130 grandparents across the state raised their grandchildren.

Children who are raised in poverty are also statistically less likely to finish high school than their peers, frequently because they are forced to get a full-time job, or they lack crucial support from their families. In Mississippi, about 64 percent of freshmen in high school will graduate, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.

And even students who graduate may not attain the skills they need to succeed in college or the work force. In the fourth grade, 78 percent of students in the state are unable to read or do math at grade level. By the eighth grade, 81 percent of students cannot read at grade level, while 85 percent lack the appropriate math skills, the Children’s Defense Fund reports.

Haven’t seen much downbeat stuff like this about life in Cali, have ya?

Just like the knuckleheads who cover baseball and mock Moneyball, news journalists resist new stats, even if they’re more insightful.

Great, just great.

6 p.m. update: fixed error spotted by reader JL. Thanks.

“Living costs may not be particularly burdensome for those at the top of the economic ladder – the fortunate folks who live in Beverly Hills, Hillsborough or other affluent enclaves. But they do affect those on the middle and lower rungs, as a new Census Bureau report underscores.

“California’s official poverty rate of 16.5 percent is somewhat higher than the national rate of 15.1 percent, but under an alternative Census Bureau method of calculating poverty that includes cost of living, our poverty rate soars to – by far – the highest rate of any state. Nearly a quarter of Californians, 23.8 percent, live in poverty.

“This is, or should be, a matter of shame, especially for politicians who profess to represent society’s underdogs but who enact policies that raise their struggling constituents’ cost of living, or inhibit the creation of jobs that would lift poor Californians out of poverty. … [While] the state’s media and political elites may sneer at Texas and other states that lack our mild weather and scenic attributes, they should note that Texas’ poverty rate is just two-thirds of California’s and Iowa’s is just one-third.”

But don’t expect the anti-Texas sneering to stop. It’s just one part of an overall mindset in the Obama era, in which the left views the right as not just wrong on politics but as pathetic, racist inferior beings. Admitting that a conservative state is better governed than California? Admitting that there are far fewer poor people in Texas than the Golden State? In San Francisco, west Los Angeles and Democratic legislative chambers, that’s akin to hate speech. The CalBuzzers are probably laughing themselves silly at the very thought these facts might be true.

By John Seiler

Dan Walters writes:

“About a quarter-century ago, I wrote a book about California’s social, economic, demographic and political evolution and quoted a couple of academics as predicting ‘the possible emerging of a two-tier economy.’

“Today, we can eliminate the ‘possible’ qualifier because it’s a proven fact.

“A Census Bureau poverty report and another from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,released simultaneously last week, should remove any lingering doubt about California’s stratification.

“The Census Bureau is experimenting with a new way of gauging poverty, one that uses more measures of income and outgo and the cost of living. And by that new standard, California has — by a wide margin — the highest level of poverty of any state, with nearly a quarter of its 38 million residents in that category.

“Meanwhile, the CBPP calculated, state by state, gaps in various family income brackets and found that California has the third largest ‘income inequality‘ between those in the highest and lowest levels, and the second largest between those in the highest and middle quintiles.”

That shows how prescient has been Walters, the dean of California reporters. Since I came to California 25 years ago, I’ve learned more about the state from him than anybody.

As Aristotle was the first to write, the key to liberty is a large middle class. That’s because only if the vast majority of people are financially able to take some time off to participate in politics can you have the discussions necessary to ensure and advance freedom.

If a society has a large number of poor people, such folks are too busy scraping together the means to survive to engage in politics adequately, meaning not just vote, but take the time to learn such things as the evils of socialism and the high taxes needed to pay for it. Such is the very definition of what we now call a “Third World” country — which definition now fits California. Wikipedia’s map of the Third World, posted above (click to enlarge), should be changed to include California.

Explanations

Walters’ explanation:

“The decline of a once-vigorous industrial economy wiped out countless well-paying, middle-class jobs. The emergence of a post-industrial economy rooted in trade, services and technology marginalized those without the specific talents and training the new economy demanded.

“Public policy did not adjust to that new economic reality, nor to the rapid ethnic diversification of the state’s population.

“In particular, public education failed to adjust — in part because school finance and governance shifted from local hands to state politicians and bureaucrats and became politically polarized. The very wide disparities in educational outcomes, from test scores to dropout rates, between white and Asian students on one end and black and Latino kids on the other attest to that failure.”

That’s pretty good. Here’s my explanation:

1. The California Coastal Commission, imposed in 1972 by voters most of whom now are dead, severely restricted housing construction in coastal areas. Other anti-housing measures were added, such as SB 375 in 2008, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and signed into law by Republican anti-California obsessive Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, further restricted the housing supply. California also has a very high divorce rate, leading to two households instead of one, which increases demand for housing and thus the price of housing.

The result is housing prices more than twice that of the rest of the country. Along with other high expenses (see below), you have to make about twice what you do in the rest of the country just to stay in the middle class.

2. You’re forced to pay sky-high taxes that just went higher. Forget the rich, who just got their taxes jacked up by Proposition 30, passed by another generation of misguided voters. Prop. 30 also increases sales taxes, already the highest in the country, grabbing another $1 billion a year, mainly from the middle class.

The top middle-class tax rate, 9.3 percent, also kicks in at around $48,000 of income, by far the highest of any state. California is the only state whose income tax is both “progressive” (aimed at the rich), because the top rate now is 13.3 percent, and “regressive” (aimed at the middle class) because of that 9.3 percent kicking in at $48,000. Indeed, $48,000 puts you in the lower-middle class. You can’t even raise a family on that in California (although you could in low-cost Michigan or Arkansas).

3. The crummy K-12 government school system means you need to pay for tutors or private-school tuition. That means you have to make even more money — which is taxed at the 9.3 percent rate!

4. Anti-jobs legislation, such as Arnold’s and Gov. Jerry Brown’s beloved AB 32, have killed hundreds of thousands of high-paying, middle-class jobs in industry.

5. The government-worker unions run roughshod over the state, totally dominating everything, as the recent election showed. With the Democratic supermajority now in both houses of the Legislature, the unions will be demanding payback, raising taxes and imposing regulations at will. With union power so great, the only people thriving in California are: Silicon Valley billionaires with  180-plus IQs, Hollywood moguls and stars, drug dealers and government workers.

6. As Walters notes, California now is a heavily Blue state, meaning (my interpretation) its political culture is pro-government, pro-tax, anti-business, anti-jobs, anti-middle class.

7. There’s one “good” development. The continued exodus of productive people from California will cause another housing crash when the next recession hits, likely some time next year. Then those who haven’t fled will have a slightly better chance of moving up into the middle class.