7 Poorest Cities in California

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Today we present you 7 poorest cities in California, the eight largest economy in the world with GDP of $2.31 trillion, which despite its affluence has the greatest percent of people living below poverty line.

According to latest Census’s official poverty measures, 16.4 percent of Golden State’s residents are labeled as poor, which is a little above the national average of 15.5. The number puts California into the category of poorer but not the poorest states. However, in 2011 Census Bureau introduced Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which was designed to overcome shortcomings of the traditional and much-criticized way of establishing the number of most vulnerable Americans. According to alternative measure, California was the poorest state three years in the raw with 23.4 percent of all Californians qualifying as poor.

7 Poorest Cities in California

One of the main differences between official and supplemental poverty measures is that former take into account regional differences in costs of living, mainly housing prices. There is an evident correlation between poverty rates under alternative measures and amounts of money necessary for renting an apartment. Seven of ten states that recorded the highest increase in poverty are among 10 most expensive rental markets. Although the latest SPM does not provide data on poverty rates for individual states, it can be assumed that nothing much has changed in California. High housing prices, which are mainly due to restrictive land use policy, continue to drive many Californians into poverty.

To find out which are 7 poorest cities in California we ranked 131 California places by percent of residents living in poverty using latest data from American Community Survey. While this ranking is solely based on the share of the total population living below poverty line, our previous list 16 poorest small cities in America 2015 took into account three criteria – poverty and unemployment rates, and real GDP per capita. Seven of 16 ranked small cities are located in California, while one found a place on both lists.

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