[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.