“Overlooked and Undercounted 2009: Struggling to Make Ends Meet in California”
The report uses the Self-Sufficiency Standard -- opposed to the nation’s official poverty measure, the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) -- to analyze Census Bureau data on the poverty rates in California. It finds that three in 10, or nearly 2.9 million, California households lack adequate income to cover basic living expenses, such as housing, food, transportation, child care and health care. The findings stand in stark contrast to the calculations made by the FPL, which suggest that only one in 10 Californians are unable to make ends meet.
The analysis, which offers county-by-county comparisons of poverty rates, examines the characteristics of families with insufficient incomes, including race, immigration status, marital status, education and employment patterns. It finds that while inadequate income affects families in nearly every demographic, those hit hardest are people of color, families with children, single mothers and foreign householders.
The report was commissioned by United Way of the Bay Area, with research conducted by the Center for Women's Welfare at the University of Washington.
