Where are the poor located in America?

[JDPriestly]

Last year, the median U.S. household income was $51,371. To determine which areas have the highest and lowest median incomes, we used the bureau’s American Fact Finder tool to sort the data of 2,120 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas.

Much like the high-income areas, the low-income areas showed an interesting geographical makeup. Nine of the 10 lowest median incomes are found in the South, as it is defined by the Census Bureau.

Conversely, the high-income areas showed more geographical diversity. While half of the them are on the East Coast, including the cities surrounding Washington, the other five are in California, Hawaii and Alaska. The high-income areas reported a median income of more than $69,000 a year.

Meanwhile, the low-income areas don’t go above $32,860. Three of them are in North Carolina, two are in Texas and the only area outside the South is in New Mexico. Other states with cities on the list are Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia. Virginia is the only state to have cities on both ends of the median-income spectrum.

More

http://homes.yahoo.com/news/the-poorest-cities-in-america-172735755.html

So the poorest states are also among the most conservative. Go figure.

Alaska has a lot of oil. That's where a good portion of the wealth there comes from. Remember. Sarah Palin's husband worked for an oil company, didn't he?

Here is a chart showing the states ranked by the number of people on food stamps.

http://homes.yahoo.com/news/the-poorest-cities-in-america-172735755.html

Note. Southern states are again among the poorest.

Interesting that many of the poorest states are also the most Republican. That is something that we Democrats need to think about. Perhaps it is because they are less well educated than people living in other states.

Oregon is a bit of an outlier. It is a fairly liberal state -- at least Western Oregon is liberal. Eastern is pretty conservative.

[XemaSab]

1. I wonder what the incomes of the bottom 90 or 80 percent would show

I'm in Redding, CA, and it's a really poor, conservative area. The teabaggers run this town, and my congressman's one of the bad ones. The economy sucks.

*BUT* it's the county seat, and it's the biggest city north of Sacramento, so there are two big hospitals, a courthouse, a jail, and hella lawyers.

I've never lived in a city that was so segregated by class. It's like there are the rich people, the middle and working classes, and the poor.

I bet if you chopped off the top 10%, this city would be near the bottom in California.

[Fumesucker]

2. Out of sight if they have any sense

Free range poor people are worth very little to anyone, poor people in prison on the other hand are worth ~$30K/year to corporations.

[madokie]

10. Spot on

[Recursion]

3. There's a cycle. Poverty and conservatism exacerbate each other

It's sort of like the gun debate: guns lead to violence, and violence leads to people wanting guns.

As a recent study points out, poverty makes people make worse decisions, and supporting conservative causes is an example of that. But of course it runs much deeper. Nobody in their right mind would start using meth or crack, but lots of poor people do, which makes them poorer, which makes them make worse decisions... etc.

[d_r]

4. But I thought

the unions destroyed Detroit. How can all these cities in right-to-work states be at the top of this list?

[seveneyes]

5. What if the cost of living is factored in?

40k in Eastbumrush KY may be as good as 100k in SF. What about the actual number of poor living in rich cities versus poor folks in rural areas? The surface has only been scratched.

[MiniMe]

6. Are there supposed to be 2 different links?

Both links are the same for me. I don't see the one for the food stamps.

[hfojvt]

7. using median income to determine poverty is not a good idea

For example, Washington DC has a ridiculously high median income. It also happens to have a ridiculously high poverty rate. Its poverty rate is 20.7% over twice as high as Idaho at 9.9%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate

Yet DC has a median income of $63,124 and Idaho only has a median income of $43,341.

As I said before, median income is a tricky measure, and NOT a measure of "what everybody makes" any more than average income is. If you have 10 people who make $40,000 one who makes $45,000 and ten who make $400,000 then your median income ins $45,000 with half above it and half below it. Yet if you have ten who make $5,000 and one who makes $60,000 and ten who make $61,000 then your media income is $60,000.

True, those are made up and imaginary distributions, but the real world a rising median income also does NOT necessarily imply widespread prosperity. It only proves an increase for thouse who are near the median. Those who are well below the median income may not be seeing any increase at all, and may, in fact, be seeing a decrease even as the median rises.

[JDPriestly]

8. Your point is true in most situations.

But if you want to determine which street in your town is the poorest, you can probably be able to determine that by looking at either the median or the average income. They will be rather close. That is because as a DUer pointed out above, the poor tend to live in segregated areas of towns and cities from the rich.

We have rich neighborhoods in our cities and poor ones.

We also have wealthy enclaves in places like New York City and Silicon Valley.

But then, we have extremely poor cities and a lot of them are in the South.

The lack of unions makes a huge difference.

The cost of living varies from community to community. Los Angeles, for example, is extremely expensive. It's the housing and fees for services. Parking tickets cost a lot here. They cost the equivalent of several hours of work for many people.

Overall, wages are also somewhat higher in Los Angeles (although not always). And that is the problem as you point out with comparing median wages because if 10 people are earning $400,000 per year and 20 are earning $25,000 per year, the median wage is $150,000 (Right?), although only a third of the people make that much. But if you look at the wages in specific areas of Los Angeles, you find that the median income in that area is far lower. So the median income does tell you where pockets of utter poverty are. They can also tell you where the wealth is.

But just because the median income is rather high in a particular area does not mean that the people are doing well because a few very high incomes can skew the statistics.

On the other hand, if the median income is very low in an area, you know with certainty that area is impoverished.

You may be able to live very well on very little in some communities in America as long as you are working, but you will not be able to save much for retirement.

When you look at international cost of living measures the differential in the value of money, seems to me, makes a big difference. You may be able to live very, very well on $5 per hour in some places in the world. But in the US, you would not live well at all.

[hfojvt]

9. actually in your example, the median would be $25,000

the average, or MEAN, would be $150,000. But the median, by definition is the income where half are above it and half are below it. Thus the median of 1, 300 and 305 is 300 and the median of 247, 251 and 8,348 is 251 and the median of 299, 300, and 301 is 300. The median tends not to be as skewed as the average. A few higher incomes do NOT pull the median up the way they do with the average.

But the article was not looking at "neighborhoods" it was looking at cities and one of its examples - Washington DC has both a high median income AND a high poverty rate.

And the irony is that often a high median income carries with it - higher living expenses and tends to cancel out the higher income. A $60,000 income in this town is enough to buy a pretty nice house. Not so in Washington DC or NYC or LA.

Neighborhoods and streets seem tough to define in my city. I mean, my house was $35,000 and many across the street and around the block are rentals. But just across the street houses were being listed for $90,000 and a mere block away for close to $200,000. And a mere 4 blocks away a street with some very expensive (and nice) homes on it. So where is the neighborhood?

Median by block can tell you something, because the group is small enough that there may be little variance. But even there, there are tricks. My neighbor, for example, pays $500 a month to rent a small house with a small yard. I, OTOH, own a larger house with a larger yard. So even if his income is $5,000 a year higher, so are his living expenses.

[JDPriestly]

14. Sorry about my mistake.

Median income in a given area in Los Angeles means a lot.

Congressman Henry Waxman's District 33 has a median income of Income (In 2011 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) $89,354. It's West Los Angeles, beach-front properties and adjacent.

http://www.cccarto.com/cacongress/33rddistrict/index.html

The median household income in Congressman Xavier Becerra's 34th district is $32,667.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California%27s_34th_congressional_district

Darryl Issa's 49th District: Median household income $68,129

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California%27s_49th_congressional_district

So there is a big variation by congressional district. We are segregated by income. West Side LA has no idea how East Side LA lives.

[hfojvt]

19. except you are talking about 700,000 people

Where I come from, Congressional districts tend to be pretty huge - like 30,000 square miles or so.

So there is huge variation in it, and median income does not tell you all that much.

Does a higher median income mean less poverty? Well, it doesn't for Washington DC. I cannot say about various California Congressional districts. Depending on expenses, it may be that some family making $40,000 a year in Becerra's district is living better than somebody making $90,000 in Waxman's.

I happen to make about $33,000 a year. Does a single guy making $90,000 a year in Waxman's district have no idea how I live?

According to what I can find, the median home price even in Pico is $540,000. There's no way that poor sap can afford to buy a house on a $90,000 a year income, and yet 50% of the people in that district make LESS money than that. I generally hate apartments, what with neighbors who annoy you and the potential for you to annoy them. I would hate to be spending $2,000 a month (or more) on rent.

The thing is if you compare Huntington Beach to Santa Monica the median income may differ by $20,000, but in Huntington there are people perhaps well above the median and in Santa Monica there are people well below the median.

[JDPriestly]

20. Except that I live here, and we have two, probably more different worlds. Plus, the city fathers

want to build more high-rise, dense, unlivable "low-income" housing in the areas that are cheaper.

Housing is very expensive in LA. But, within the City, in general, it is much cheaper on the East Side than on the West Side. The city zip codes have the prefix 900. The independent towns and cities surrounding and within LA Country have zip codes with prefixes like 910__.

Check out this map.

http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Los_Angeles-California/market-trends/

I think those are asking prices. You can drag the map from one side of the city to the other. It isn't cheap anywhere. So $34,000 is really a low income in LA. As you said you can live pretty well on that in some parts of the country. But if your rent is from $1500-$2000 per month, you need to share the costs with someone.

You will see how much more expensive housing is in West LA. Los Angeles is separated into communities by incomes. That discourages social mobility.

People who live in West LA have a different lifestyle than those who live in East L.A. You go West and there are many, many billboards advertising movies, lots of trendy businesses, comedy clubs, really nice malls, etc. If you live to the East, you practically have to leave LA and go to a neighboring town like South Pasadena, Pasadena or Glendale to find a mall with upper end shopping.

We are completely divided by class and income. It of course has a racial component. Unbelievable but true.

This is why I so strongly believe that the biggest problem in our society is the disparity in income. It leaves many at the bottom of the income scale in despair, hopeless. The only thing that will help is raising lower wages. I strongly oppose cheap imports and the export of our jobs for that reason. The imports and job exports have depressed American wages. We used to be a hopeful country. Maybe that is still true at the top, but there are so many signs that we are turning into a rather bitter country. The increasing numbers of whistleblowers in industry and the government are a sign of the disillusionment. People cannot picture themselves actually improving their economic status. It still happens but that is not the view that most Americans have. They don't see their neighbors or themselves improving economically.

We will pay a price for that disparity in wealth. In a city like LA, that disparity just stares you in the face. It is shameful and shocking. And I am not just talking about the numbers of homeless people. I am also talking about the struggling middle class.

[tillikum]

11. a better question is "what percentage of the population has zero net worth"

and those are your poor.

lest anyone really believe that you aren't living a life designed for you.

what, 50% of jobs are now bullshit, automatable (not a word), but machines dont spend half their income on Starbucks and flat screens do they?

[JDPriestly]

12. Sorry. I don't undertand your post. What are you saying?

[tillikum]

13. im saying that none of us are as rich as we think we are

and the 1% are so obscenely rich not just in money, most can't comprehend.

[Blue_In_AK]

15. Alaska has a lot of oil, and it's where the wealth comes from BUT

our idiot governor and his gerrymandered rubberstamp legislature voted last session to give the big oil companies at $2 billion a year tax cut which pretty much guarantees that we'll start running a deficit soon. A referendum has been approved for the 2014 ballot which would rescind this very unpopular law. We needed approximately 30,000 signatures on the referendum petition and got over 50,000 from all 40 congressional districts in the state, a pretty amazing feat given the size of the state, but it's an accurate gauge of how very unpopular this action was.

If they keep it up, they may turn this state back to blue the way it used to be before we were taken over by Texas and Oklahoma carpetbaggers.

[NCTraveler]

16. For these figures to be used in any meaningful way.

You would have to connect them to the cost of living in each area.

[JDPriestly]

17. That is only partly true. Because we are all in the same country living in the same economy.

If you save 10% of $34,000 per year, chances are very great that you will have much less to invest and therefore much less investment income for starting your own business or for paying for college or healthcare. You have far less family wealth passed from generation to generation. You have a lower tax base and therefore collect lower taxes. That is why the Southern states are receivers of federal tax money in general while the Northern states and Western states (especially California) are tax donors at the federal level.

It would be easy for me in California to sell a house (assuming I had one) in California and go live in Mississippi on far less and buy a house for far less than in California. But someone from Mississippi cannot sell their house and buy another one in California for much less. So the people who are poorer in Mississippi have fewer choices, less mobility. They are stuck. No wonder they are angry and conservative. They are stuck.

And the politicians in the Southern and Midwestern states with relatively poor populations like it that way.

If you have a very low income, you cannot go to really good schools even if you can get a house and eat for less in your hometown.

Read the story of John Jacob Astor. Wealth is to a great extent attributable to location, location, location. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on him. He just happened figure the future accurately and bought a lot of Manhattan. His prior jobs were merchant of furs and even opium. But it was buying land destined to be very valuable that made his fortune. And not a small portion of the wealth of the world is due to the fact that someone luckily lives on or buys land with a wealthy destiny.

In 1804, Astor purchased from Aaron Burr what remained of a 99-year lease on property in Manhattan. At the time, Burr was serving as vice president under Thomas Jefferson and desperately needed the purchase price of $62,500. The lease was to run until 1866. Astor began subdividing the land into nearly 250 lots and subleased them. His conditions were that the tenant could do whatever they wish with the lots for twenty-one years, after which they must renew the lease or Astor would take back the lot.
Real estate and retirement

Astor began buying land in New York in 1799 and acquired sizable holdings along the waterfront. After the start of the 19th century, flush with China trade profits, his interest in real estate became more systematic, more ambitious, and more calculating. In 1803, he bought a 70 acre farm that ran west of Broadway to the Hudson river between 42nd and 46th streets. That same year, and the following year, he bought considerable holdings from the disgraced Aaron Burr.[15]

In the 1830s, John Jacob Astor foresaw that the next big boom would be the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world’s greatest cities. Astor withdrew from the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and used the money to buy and develop large tracts of Manhattan real estate. Astor correctly predicted New York's rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, purchasing more and more land beyond the then-existing city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, and instead let others pay rent to use it.

After retiring from his business, Astor spent the rest of his life as a patron of culture. He supported the ornithologist John James Audubon and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor

The most brilliant person in the world could be living right now somewhere in the Louisiana Bayou and if he isn't in the right place at the right time with the right amount of cash to get a great education, you will never know what he might have been.

We need to lift up the people living in relative poverty in the depressed areas of the US.

If you took two brothers, one who lived in New York State all his life and invested in real estate there, and the other who moved to Wyoming and bought three times the amount of land as the brother in New York, odds are the brother in New York would make a lot more money than the one in Wyoming even though the Wyoming brother had more land and could live more cheaply. The Wyoming brother would bequeath a life of hard work to his children. The brother in New York would most likely bequeath a few brownstones and the life of a landlord. I might prefer Wyoming, but I would be poorer for it.

[NCTraveler]

18. You are correct about it only being partly true, and do make good points.

But they do need to be connected none the less. There are places in Florida where the cost per sq ft on a home is half that of many places in Virginia. The difference can be huge. Your points stand as valid.