A number of posts have dealt with poverty.
According to the most accurate measure, California does poorly.
Alex Horowitz, Liz Clifford, and Linlin Liang at Pew:
Housing costs are usually the largest item in a household’s budget and can determine a family’s financial stability. In the United States, a housing shortage estimated at 4 million to 7 million homes has driven rents so far above historical norms that these costs have become a significant cause of poverty. Zachary Parolin, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, examined 2023 housing costs in the U.S. and identified the states (counting Washington, D.C., among them) where the greatest share of poverty is attributable to high rent. They are Hawaii, California, D.C., New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire.
This analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts explores Parolin’s work and examines the ways housing supply and costs affect poverty. As cities and states move to address high housing costs and increase supply through changes to zoning codes, building codes, and permitting processes, a key question is who will benefit from those changes. Parolin’s research, building on his earlier work focused on California and published by the Niskanen Center, bolsters evidence that housing costs have a direct impact on poverty and that policies to enable more housing will help reduce poverty and benefit low-income households in particular.
Key takeaways:
- In Hawaii, California, D.C., New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire, 16% to 34% of poverty is attributable to above-average housing costs.
- High housing costs are offsetting some of the anti-poverty effects of measures such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food assistance to low-income households.
- Removing regulatory barriers to housing increases supply and lowers rents.
- In the states examined in this analysis, a drop of approximately 20% in inflation-adjusted rents—as happened in Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis after those cities made reforms—could reduce poverty by 18% to 26% and child poverty by 21% to 38%.
