[sarchertech]

I understand it’s confusing because the papers on the site mingle proposed plans with adopted plans.

Here’s a summary of exactly what happened. If you want to research that yourself I’ll include a link to an overview, but I know what I’m talking about.

1. Start with the 1963 base thresholds developed by Orshansky.

2. Apply the 1969 revision:

-Keep the 1963 nonfarm thresholds as the base.

-Change the inflation adjustment method from food-plan costs to CPI.

-Change the farm adjustment.

3. Every year thereafter:

-Take the prior threshold and adjust it by the relevant CPI. (Originally CPI-W, then CPI-U after about 1980.)

4. Apply a few technical revisions in 1981:

- Remove farm/nonfarm distinction.

- Remove male-headed/female-headed distinction.

- Expand family-size categories.

That’s it. The numbers are still based on the data from 1963 adjusted for inflation each year. There are differences in that we no longer look at the gender of the head of household and farm families no longer have lower multiple applied.

But the number is just the calculations from 1963 based on a multiple of the amount of food needed carried forward.

Most other countries use a relative benchmark for poverty and most other counties use COL adjustments by region. The US does not. It is stupid that we don’t. And using the resulting measurements from this flawed system is horribly misleading.

As to whether you can live on $43 a day minus rent. Louisiana has expanded Medicaid coverage, so someone making $16k a year will get free healthcare. Assuming a single person with no kids, they’ll also get about $180 a month in snap benefits which covers a little more than half of the $333 usda thrifty food plan. So how about you tell me how this hypothetical person can’t survive on $1,333 a month with rent, healthcare, and half of their food covered? If you can’t imagine being able to survive on that you must living in a very high cost of living area.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-pa...

[dahart]

> using the resulting measurements from this flawed system is horribly misleading

Then don’t. Use the cost-of-living metric you’ve been arguing for to answer the relevant question here. When accounting for cost of living, you will discover exactly what we already know: Louisiana’s population is the poorest in the nation.

[sarchertech]

I’m not actually sure which state has the highest percentage of people under a poverty threshold adjusted for COL because to do that math you need a specific poverty breakdown by household size and that’s far more effort than I’m willing to put in.

New York, California, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Louisiana all have % below ALICE thresholds between 46 and 50%.

Based on that I think it’s very likely any one of those could have the highest percentage of people under a COL adjusted poverty threshold. Either way they’re so close that’s there’s no meaningful difference.

The real question is why would you use the percent of people under some threshold as your primary factor when deciding to label their entire popular “poor”.

I certainly wouldn’t use COL adjusted poverty rates to say that New York or California is poor, or that the populations of those states are poor.

Let’s say hypothetically that we constructed a rich threshold, say it’s $500k a year COL adjusted. And some hypothetical state was both number one for percentage of people over the rich threshold and number one for percentage of people below the poor threshold, would you say that this population was the poorest in the nation or the richest?

[dahart]

ALICE is adjusted by household size, and cost of living adjusted. Louisiana is the state with the highest percentage of people below ALICE threshold, and the only state that crosses the 50% line. It’s right on their map, so now you know. https://www.unitedforalice.org/national-overview

You can continue to equivocate about other states that are close, it doesn’t really make a relevant difference here. Louisiana has the most poor people by “stupid” absolute percent below the federal level, it has the most poor people by cost-of-living household-size adjusted ALICE level, the third lowest median income, and the third lowest number of billionaires per capita. By multiple objective metrics, including the one you asked for, Louisiana is most definitely poor.

[sarchertech]

ALICE isn’t the same thing as a COL adjusted poverty measure though.

If you want to just look at ALICE as what qualifies a state to be called poor then sure let’s do it, but if that’s the case then if Louisiana is poor at 50%, then New York is a poor state at 48% and California is a poor state at 46%.

If that’s the argument that there is a big group of poor states all over the country including California and New York that includes Louisiana then I’m not gonna argue. I wouldn’t make that claim but I can see how someone would.