Visual Capitalist just published a ranking of the percentage of each state’s population in poverty. The Census Bureau calculates this statistic by comparing pretax household income with three times the cost of a minimum food diet in each state adjusted for family size. The ten states with the highest and lowest proportion in poverty are:
Highest |
Lowest |
||
| 1. Louisiana | 18.9% | Utah | 6.7% |
| 2. New Mexico | 18.5% | New Hampshire | 7.1% |
| 3. Mississippi | 17.3% | Minnesota | 7.2% |
| 4. Arkansas | 15.8% | Vermont | 7.7% |
| 5. Kentucky | 15.7% | Colorado | 8.2% |
| 6. West Virginia | 15.3% | South Dakota | 8.3% |
| 7. Oklahoma | 14.9% | Wisconsin | 8.4% |
| 8. Alabama | 14.6% | New Jersey | 8.4% |
| 9. D.C. | 13.4% | Nebraska | 8.4% |
| 10. North Carolina | 13.2% | Washington | 8.5% |
The spread is striking in that the poor states have at least twice the percentage in poverty compared to the more affluent ones. Second, there seems to be a geographic divide with the poorer states generally located in the southern half of the country and the richer ones in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and West. A key point is that a comparison of these rankings with the states characterized by the highest and lowest life expectancy produces close to a one-to-one correspondence. The gap between life expectancy in high and low life expectancy states is about six years. Even more poignant, there are individual counties in the U.S. where life expectancy is twenty years shorter than in counties located in the states in the right-hand column above. Similarly, there is a high correlation in other measures such as educational attainment, quality and access to health care, obesity, opioid use, and accidental death.