Bret Stephens has a column in the New York Times this week taking on the now-tedious subject of what a hellhole California is. This is not a topic I really feel like wasting time on anymore, other than to say (a) every state has problems, and (b) California is a high-tax-high-service state. That's not for everyone, I suppose, but it's a pretty good model for a lot of people.
However, Ramesh Ponnuru points out that one of California's genuinely worst problems is its poverty rate, due largely to our high housing costs. This got me curious about the relationship between poverty rates and urbanization. Is California's poverty rate high largely because it's heavily urban? Here's a look:
You can see two things here. First, poverty clearly increases significantly in heavily urban states. Second, California is nonetheless well above the trendline, which means our poverty rate is higher than you'd expect even given our high rate of urbanization.
There's a lot of noise here, and urbanization doesn't explain a lot about poverty, but it does explain some. In California's case, I'd guess that our heavily Hispanic population also has a lot to do with it.
Is there a formula for this curve? Looking at the all the points, there doesn't seem to be much correlation, although if you squint, maybe there's an upward slope at the right end of the graph. But fitting curves (as opposed to straight lines) is either done by SWAG or it requires some mathematical sophistication, which should be explained.
Plus the fact, if you are super poor and living outside a lot, there is no nicer place to do it in the country, by far, than anywhere else.
> In California's case, I'd guess that our heavily Hispanic population also has a lot to do with it.
Sounds racist. How about "immigrant population"?
I was jarred by the hispanic population statement too but unfortunately immigrant is probably not accurate. There are a lot of Indian immigrants in the bay area that are doing quite well. The statement is only racist in so much as our society is racist and has discriminated against certain ethnic groups. In addition in the case of California it shares a border with a Hispanic country which is attached to many others. Immigrants from other countries will have to spend significantly more to get over the oceans. That generally means non-hispanic immigrants were able to accumulate more wealth prior to immigrating and likely have skills that will be better rewarded here too. In addition due to their density it is possible for a spanish speaker to live within the US but be able to subsist without being well integrated into the larger society with all its benefits.
Many of those people would view the word "Hispanic" as racist because they are not from Spain. I know. I'm related to some Cubans and they'll give you an earful about it.
How about "farm laborers"?
Your fruits, veggies and nuts don't pick themselves.
California is the leading agricultural state in terms of dollar value and a lot of it is in labor-intensive crops, not vast wheat or corn fields that can be cultivated mechanically. So there are lots of farm laborers, who of course nowadays are all almost entirely recent immigrants, legal or illegal. They are used because they accept low wages, and partly because they can be exploited in various ways.
California has been raising its minimum wage steeply and it will be $15 soon. Farm workers will also get better overtime rules. This should pull a lot of people out of poverty.
Why is there a curved line? This is a scatter plot, not a time-series.
I dunno. I see you put a line through it but I'm not convinced that line is valid. The data looks almost straight to me. You need to do an ANOVA.
Right? You could draw almost any line through that data.
As much as I like to see propaganda that discourages immigration into California, I do feel that I should point out some of the misuses of data.
First is the "California is a high tax state" canard. Sure, if you measure everything by only one tax, you can prove whatever you want. The average tax burden of CA taxes on its citizens is about 9.4% – only about one percentage point higher than the median tax burden of a state. (https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494/), and is only about one point higher than the vaunted Texas.
Texas does have the advantage that their Income Tax ON RICH PEOPLE is only 3%, compared to California's 12%, but it is different for the poor: poor people in Texas pay the same as rich people in California, but the poor in California pay less than those in Texas.
Obviously the term "progressive tax" is rejected in Texas.
California also has the lowest rate of native born leaving than any other state.
We can go on and make fun of Stephens' cherry picking of data (crime rate in San Francisco has dropped 36% in this pandemic year, according to his own link, but you can pick out a few where it has increased: like Arson, which reached the stratifiying heights of 33 cases so far this year (up from 19). (Good thing for Stephens that he didn't write the article a month ago when there was 0 increase in Arson).
But that is OK, Stephens: tell the world how awful it is in California: and certainly don't mention the 40% increase in homicides in 2020. In Houston.
On Jan 9, 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Bay Area murders increased 35-percent.
The reason crime is down "overall" is probably related to how California has redefined its penal code.
Theft is common enough many businesses, CVS and Walgreens included, have closed. Not reporting or prosecuting crime is not the same as having less.
If Utah is counted among the top quarter of urbanized states, it really makes we wonder what definition of "urbanization" is being used here.