California still has highest poverty rate under new method

◼ California still has - by a huge margin - the highest poverty rate of any state under an alternative Census Bureau calculation that includes the cost of living. - Dan Walters/Sacramento Bee

The Census Bureau report, issued Wednesday, says that nearly a quarter of California's 38 million residents live in poverty by the alternative method - almost 9 million - and the state's 23.8 percent rate is approached only by Washington, D.C.'s 22.7 percent.

Among other states, the second highest alternative poverty rate is found in Nevada at 19.8 percent while the lowest rates are found in Iowa (8.6 percent) and Wyoming (9.2 percent). Nationally, the alternative rate is 16 percent.

California's official poverty rate is 16.5 percent and while higher than the national official rate of 15.1 percent, it is surpassed by those of many other states.

The official rate is based on half-century-old criteria that have been criticized as being obsolete, leading the Census Bureau to develop the alternative method that uses broader indices, including the cost of living. The official rate assumes, in essence, that the cost of living is the same nationwide....

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Administration officials have declined to say whether the new measure eventually could replace the official poverty formula, which is used to allocate federal dollars to states and localities and to determine eligibility for safety-net programs such as Medicaid.

Congress would have to agree to adopt the new measure, which generally would result in a higher poverty rate from year to year and thus higher government payouts for aid programs