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Mississippi is one of the states that has a lower poverty rate than California when cost of living is taken into account. There are 48 others, can list them fo

• ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  I was just answering your question: > If the worst poverty rate is "doing well", what would doing poorly look like, in your opinion? If your measure of pretty much anything puts Mississippi above California then maybe you've not got a great measure for doing well?
  • dragonwriter 5y ago
    Were it not for discrepancies I how federal policy effects states, the Supplementary Poverty Measure would be an excellent measure of how well you are doing at distributing the returns of economic activity generated. As it is, it's a decent measure anyway. California (contrary to a lot of the images people have of what a progressive state would excel at compared to a more conservative one) is excellent at generating aggregate economic activity with great conditions for capital and a narrow elite labor segment, and very bad at distributing those aggregate gains to the rest of society. (To be fair, there is a very significant way in which that compared to other states, is because the more you fail at the first, the more the feds will ship money from the states that succeed at it to you as long as you commit to spend it on the second, so part of why Missippi looks better is that the gains of the strong aggregate economy California generates are skimmed at given to reduce local poverty in places like Mississippi, not based on relative need as measured by the SPM, but based simply on Mississippi’s weaker aggregate performance.