Stanford releases new poverty index for California

Because of a weak labor market and California's notoriously expensive housing, 22 percent of all Californians are in poverty, says a Stanford professor who participated in the development of a new measure of poverty in the state. The sky-high cost of housing in California is pushing many families into poverty, according to new research by Stanford's Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Public Policy Institute of California. The harsh reality of high rents and mortgage payments are felt most severely in metro areas such as Los Angeles, a finding that came out of a new index of poverty in California. The index provides a more rigorous measure than the commonly used official poverty measure of the U.S. Census Bureau. The new California Poverty Measure improves on the official measure by taking housing costs and transfer payments into account, said David Grusky, a sociology professor who serves as the director of Stanford's Center on Poverty and Inequality. Under the new measure, 22 percent of Californians live in poverty, and that figure would be even higher if not for the state and federal safety nets, including CalFresh, the state's food stamp program; CalWORKs, the state's cash assistance program; and the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. If these programs were not in place, the child poverty rate would increase by another 12 percentage points, raising it from nearly 25 percent to nearly 37 percent of all children.