A number of posts have dealt with poverty.
According to the most accurate measure, California does poorly.
The national official poverty rate of 10.2% was 2.9 percentage points lower than the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rate of 13.1% in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Poverty in the United States: 2025 report released today.
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The official poverty measure defines poverty by comparing pre-tax money income — gross (before taxes) income from things like earnings, Social Security, and pensions — to a threshold based on family size. Families or individuals are considered to be in poverty if their income falls below that threshold.
The SPM is a broader measure of poverty. It takes into account income plus the value of benefits from government programs designed to assist low-income families (like SNAP and housing assistance). It then subtracts medical, work and other necessary expenses.
It also accounts for state and federal taxes, adding things like tax refunds and subtracting taxes paid. Another difference: SPM thresholds vary by geography and housing tenure (renters, owners, and those without rent or a mortgage) while official poverty thresholds are the same for the whole country.
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The bottom panel of Figure 1 shows the three-year average SPM rate by state. From 2023 to 2025, Louisiana (19.0%) and California (17.8%) had among the highest SPM rates, while New Hampshire (8.0%), South Dakota (8.0%), Minnesota (7.9%), Nebraska (7.5%) and Maine (6.4%) had among the lowest.
