Tag: poverty

Mapped: Extreme Poverty in America by State

In 2024, 6% of the U.S. population lived in extreme poverty, equal to 20.4 million people.

While there are different definitions of extreme poverty, this is represented as those earning less than $8,160 in annual income, or half of the poverty line. As the federal budget makes cuts to food assistance and healthcare, levels of extreme poverty run the risk of worsening even further.

This graphic shows the share of each state living in extreme poverty in 2024, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Going further, economic hardship disproportionately impacts people of color in Washington D.C., with one in three black children living in poverty between 2019 and 2023, on average.

As we can see, Southern states also rank among the most impoverished. In Louisiana, 9% of residents live in extreme poverty, and on average, 18.9% lived below the poverty line between 2021 and 2023.

Meanwhile, 7% of New York’s population are extremely impoverished, equal to an estimated 1.4 million people.

On the other end of the spectrum is New Hampshire with the lowest rate nationally, at 3.9%. The Granite State benefits from a stable job market, low unemployment, and a strong education system. Paired with relatively affordable healthcare, these factors contribute to higher living standards for its residents, reducing the risk of poverty.

Keep reading

Trump’s HHS Overhauls Welfare Program with Focus on Accountability

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Administration for Children and Families, selected Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, and Virginia to participate in the redesigned Temporary Assistance for Needy Families pilot.

This pilot will test innovative approaches to promote employment, reduce government dependency, and strengthen family outcomes. 

Authorized under the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, the six-year pilot will replace the Work Participation Rate and instead measure state success using new, outcome-based metrics that aim to deliver real results for families and taxpayers. 

For example, states will now be held accountable for improving employment outcomes, supporting earnings growth, and reducing reliance on cash assistance, Medicaid, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

“The Trump Administration is returning to the original promise of welfare reform—ensuring our programs are laser-focused on helping families achieve lasting self-sufficiency while delivering results for taxpayers,” said ACF Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison. “This pilot marks the beginning of a new era where states are empowered to test new strategies, achieve real outcomes, and build an evidence base for innovations that drive upward mobility in America.”

The federal agency posted on social media:

“ACF is launching the redesigned TANF pilot with newly selected states: AZ, IA, NE, OH, & VA. The 6-year pilot will test new ways to: Promote work Strengthen family stability Reduce dependency.”

Keep reading

SNAP Fraud Has Doubled Since Last Year. Here’s Why.

Criminals are looting public safety net programs using digital tools, according to a new report released by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. 

The report analyzed reported fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Integrated Eligibility Systems. Fraud in the SNAP program has doubled, the report said. 

The 54-page report reveals that the cost and volume of SNAP fraud have risen sharply over the past year, driven by the accelerated shift to digital channels, increasingly sophisticated Electronic Benefits Transfer theft schemes, and complex multi-program eligibility systems. 

The findings of this year’s report are especially significant given the administrative and programmatic changes introduced to SNAP agencies across the country by House Resolution 1. 

According to the 2025 study, the average monthly rate of fraudulent SNAP applications and post-issuance cases has doubled since 2024. For every $1 in SNAP benefits lost to fraud, agencies now incur $4.14 in total costs, up from $3.93 a year ago.

“SNAP is a lifeline for millions of families, and these findings highlight how increasingly sophisticated criminals are targeting this critical benefit program,” said Amanda D’ Amico, Senior Director at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “Digital channels and expanded eligibility systems improve access but also expand the attack surface. Agencies that leverage real-time data, identity verification, and digital authentication solutions to detect fraud and increase cross-program collaboration can turn the tide against fraud while ensuring timely benefits for those in need.”

Keep reading

COLLAPSIFORNIA: California tied with Louisiana for nation’s highest poverty rate in 2024

In a stark juxtaposition that defies its sun-drenched, affluent image, California has officially tied Louisiana for the highest poverty rate in the United States. A new analysis reveals that in 2024, a staggering seven million Californians, which makes up 17.7 percent of the state’s population, were living below the poverty line, a figure that mirrors the deep economic distress long associated with the Deep South.

This alarming parity, drawn from a report by the California Budget and Policy Center, uses the Census Bureau’s supplemental measure that provides a more realistic picture by factoring in crushing local costs of living, medical expenses and family size.

While the two states now share this grim title, their paths leading up to this point are a study in contrasting American crises: one of exorbitant urban wealth, the other of persistent rural need.

A tale of two poverty crises

For Louisiana, a 17.7 percent poverty rate is a familiar reality. The state has perennially ranked among the nation’s poorest, grappling with job shortages in rural areas and a legacy of economic stagnation.

For California, however, this ranking is a monumental policy failure. The state is an economic powerhouse, home to some of the world’s most valuable companies and richest individuals. Yet, its prosperity is a mirage for millions of its residents.

The report points directly to the expiration of pandemic-era aid as the catalyst for a nationwide surge in poverty, the largest in over fifty years.

In 2021, expanded child tax credits, boosted food assistance and eviction protections had slashed California’s poverty rate to a record low of 11 percent. As that lifeline was severed, the fall was precipitous and painful.

The primary engine of California’s poverty crisis is not a lack of jobs, but a suffocating cost of living, with housing as the lead weight. The state is a nation of renters in peril; their poverty rate is a devastating 27.1 percent, more than double the 11.1 percent rate for homeowners.

In major cities, the median rent routinely exceeds $2,000 a month, forcing low-income families to dedicate more than a third of their income solely to keeping a roof over their heads.

This creates impossible choices between paying rent, buying groceries, or covering medical bills. The consequences are visible in the state’s sprawling homeless encampments and in the overcrowded apartments where multiple families “double up” to survive.

For many, the California dream has been reduced to a government-dependent existence where quality of life is dictated by the level of public assistance one can secure.

The crisis is not felt equally. Children and seniors experience poverty rates above 20 percent.

Black and Latino residents see rates roughly ten points higher than their white neighbors, a glaring inequity driven by wage gaps and a dire shortage of affordable childcare.

Keep reading

Homeless Camps Are Morphing Into Larger Homeless ‘Cities’ In LA

A massive homeless encampment in Koreatown has grown into what neighbors describe as a “city” of its own — complete with a tennis court, garden, barbecue pit, and even illegally rigged electricity, according to the NY Post.

“The reason why people are sleeping here is because you leaders are sleeping on not taking initiative and action to clean this place up,” resident Daniel King told ABC7.

Neighbors say they’ve watched people pry open a streetlight, install a surge protector inside, and run extension cords across the street to power the camp. “Thank God it hasn’t rained in a while,” said Sangmin Lee. “It’s a fire hazard … then they run the cable across the street, and it’s a trip hazard for everyone.”

Lee also pointed out, “There’s a tennis court, there’s a garden where they’re growing stuff… There’s a barbecue pit.” Another neighbor, Max Smith, summed it up: “It’s a city in there. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.”

The Post writes that residents say the camp has created safety concerns, with one woman telling ABC7 she avoids walking her dog near the site after being approached by people from the encampment. An ABC7 crew was also threatened while reporting there.

Keep reading

Fox News host on mentally ill people who commit crimes: “Just kill them”

LAWRENCE JONES (FOX HOST):  We don’t have to — we feel so compassionate because you see the mental health crisis happening.

AINSLEY EARHARDT (FOX HOST): You just get — exactly.

JONES  But it’s not our job — we shouldn’t have to live in fear while they figure out what is going on right there.

EARHARDT: Right, right.

JONES: Put him in a mental institution, put him in a jail, and you guys figure it out. But people having to duck and dive on the trains and the buses, walking through the street, this is one case, but this is happening all across the country, and it’s not a money issue. They have given billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population. A lot of them don’t want to take the programs, a lot of them don’t want to get the help that is necessary. You can’t give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we’re going to give you and — or you decide that you are going to be locked up in jail. That’s the way it has to be now.

BRIAN KILMEADE (FOX HOST): Or involuntary lethal injection.

JONES: Yeah.

KILMEADE : Or something. Just kill them.

EARHARDT: Yeah, Brian, why did it have to get to this point?

KILMEADE: Right, I would say this, we are not voting for the right people. In North Carolina, wake up. You can’t put — keep putting these people in power. They woke up in Los Angeles, they got a stronger D.A. They woke up and they got rid of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. Hopefully they will get rid of this terrible guy Alvin Bragg in New York. And now it’s up to the people in the election which is whoever is up in November and that Senate seat that belongs to Thom Tillis who by the way yesterday said I don’t want any help from the federal government to bring crime under control in cities like Charlotte. That’s your decision. But Michael Whatley or you could have Governor Cooper. Governor Cooper gave you these terrible laws. Mike Whatley wouldn’t. And he ran the RNC. These are the people in North Carolina. Purple leaning red state. They got a big choice. On this element, it is political. Because it’s political because politics has to change this.

Keep reading

Rep. Jasmine Crockett: ‘No Good Point’ in Prosecuting Crimes Committed ‘to Survive’

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) suggested this week that poverty can drive people to commit certain crimes, arguing during a podcast interview that prosecutions are not always justified when offenses involve basic survival needs.

Speaking Wednesday on the Grounded podcast, Crockett, a former public defender, explained there is “a direct link between poverty and susceptibility to having to engage in certain things.” She insisted that not all people in poverty turn to crime, but maintained that circumstances often push individuals toward unlawful acts.

“There are crimes that are committed, not because people are criminals, but because they literally are trying to survive,” Crockett stated. She went on to cite Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, who in past remarks suggested that his office would not prosecute low-level theft cases involving food, diapers, or other necessities. Crockett noted Creuzot “probably shouldn’t have said it out loud,” but nonetheless agreed with the approach, adding that “there is no good point in doing it because a decent defense attorney would have a defense.”

Crockett has become known for making radical statements on crime, politics, and the Trump administration. On the same day the podcast interview was released, she claimed during an MSNBC appearance that President Donald Trump was “unlawfully going into various minority controlled cities” with the National Guard.

Keep reading

China’s Economic Miracle a Myth: Middle Class Still Poorer Than U.S. Welfare Recipients

China apologists often repeat the Communist Party’s line about the so-called “Chinese Economic Miracle,” claiming that Beijing has “lifted 800 million people out of poverty” as proof that its system is superior to the American one. What they ignore is that it was the Communist Party that first drove some 700 million people into poverty, and it was only the partial adoption of American-style capitalism that allowed them to climb out.

Another oft-cited statistic is that since 2000, average income in China has grown by about 700 percent, compared with only 92 percent in the United States. But the American starting point was far higher. In 1900, average annual income in the U.S. was about $450, while in China it was just $15.

By 2000, the U.S. figure had risen to $41,989, compared with only $959 in China. Today, U.S. average income is $80,610, while China’s stands at just $13,300.

China’s middle class is often estimated at 500 million people, larger than the entire U.S. population. But the definition is misleading. The Chinese government counts anyone earning as little as $7,250 a year as “middle class.” By comparison, in 2024 the average annual disposable income in the United States was about $52,000, or $4,333 per month.

China’s own National Development and Reform Commission reports that 900 million Chinese citizens had a monthly disposable income under $282, and 600 million lived on less than $143.

To qualify for public benefits in the U.S., a single-person household typically must earn $2,510 or less per month before taxes to be eligible for SNAP (food stamps). In fiscal year 2025, the average benefit per person is expected to be $187 per month, or $6.16 per day. This means that nearly all Chinese households would qualify for U.S. food assistance, and that the average food stamp allowance in America is greater than the total disposable income of most Chinese citizens.

Unlike the former Soviet Union, China provides its citizens with very limited socialized benefits. Public schools charge fees, retirement benefits are meager, and healthcare is far from free. Families must shoulder most of the costs themselves, often leaving China’s so-called middle class with less disposable income than U.S. welfare recipients.

Keep reading

Brooke Rollins Approves Louisiana SNAP Waiver Eliminating Soda and Candy from Eligible Items

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved Louisiana’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) waiver barring individuals from purchasing soda and candy with food stamps and adding rotisserie chicken to the eligible items in an effort to Make America Healthy Again.

“Guess what was in the mail? Got a great postcard from the wonderful Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, my great friend, and this is our SNAP waiver,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) said in a video update Tuesday morning.

“Thank you, President Trump. Thank you, Brooke Rollins, for helping make Louisiana healthy again,” he continued, explaining that SNAP beneficiaries are “more likely to have higher rates of obesity that creates a greater risk for chronic diseases.”

“We want to make Louisianans healthy, so you will no longer be able to buy sugary candy, energy drinks, or soft drinks — no more soda pop —  on food stamps,” he said.

However, the governor said they are adding rotisserie chicken, which will now be covered.

“We want all of Louisiana to be healthy, and our welfare programs are supposed to be a hand up, not a candy out,” Landry added, thanking President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Keep reading

The Chicanery Behind Inequality Data

If self-described progressives decry anything more fiercely than poverty, it is income and wealth inequality. Some have even suggested that they would prefer low-income equality to inequality, regardless of how affluent the lowest level was. What counts is the gap.

The terms poor and low-income are relative, of course. We’d be better off talking about the poorer and lower-income. Also, it’s better to be poor in America than anywhere else if we factor in immeasurables such as good prospects. However, some people don’t understand the point or perhaps don’t want to understand it. Reasonable people ask, “How am I doing and how can I do better?” not, “How much less am I making than Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk [but not Taylor Swift or Juan Soto]?”

So let’s talk about inequality—not in the legal and political sense but in terms of income and wealth. You can’t go a day without hearing politicians and commentators complain about the top 1, 10, or 20 percent. Those complaints seem to be backed up by government statisticians and parts of the economics and sociology professions. Dissenters are rarely invited on television and podcasts. The impression given, to which compassionate laypeople will be vulnerable, is that America is riddled with extreme, even obscene (so Bernie Sanders says) inequality. Is it true?

Economists Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux make an overwhelming case against it in their book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism. Gross inequality is one of those myths. (Last week I discussed their chapter on poverty.)

“[T]he claim that income inequality in America is high and rising on a secular basis is almost universally accepted as true,” Gramm and Boudreaux report. But: “Census numbers overstate the difference between the top and bottom quintile household incomes by over 300 percent.” Can they back up that claim? Let’s see.

The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that in 2017 the average income of households in the richest quintile (the top 20 percent) was 16.7 times greater than the average in the lowest quintile. No one can say, without other information, whether that number is appropriate or not. But is it accurate?

“The official Census data also show,” Gramm and Boudreaux continue, “that income inequality has grown on a secular basis and, by 2017, was 22.9 percent higher than in 1947.” That’s not all. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United States has the worst record on this count among the wealthy countries—and it’s been getting worse.

Let’s pause for a word about the morality of income and wealth inequality. Individuals contribute unequally to the production of wealth, which improves living standards even for those who contribute little or nothing. So why would anyone expect their incomes and wealth to be equal? Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Gramm and Boudreaux disclose a puzzle about the government’s numbers: “According to the official statistics of the nation’s two leading statistical agencies, the bottom 20 percent of American households had an average income of $13,258 in 2017 yet, in that same year, consumed $26,091 of goods and services.”

This fact raises the obvious question of how the bottom 20 percent of households can consume twice their income. This extraordinary gap between the official measure of income and the official measure of consumption has grown more or less steadily since 1967, when funding for the War on Poverty began to ramp up.”

That indeed is a puzzle. Could it be that the government agencies do not count everything that’s relevant? 

Keep reading