This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For California to recover fully from this pandemic and to do so in such a way that new prosperity is broadly shared,

the state will have to deal with several underlying problems.

Cato's Michael Tanner heads our project on poverty and inequality in California.

We spoke last week.

People who aren't familiar with the statistics on poverty in the United States would be sort of shocked and alarmed to hear how stark the poverty situation is in California.

Why is poverty in California so different and more pronounced that it is elsewhere?

It is pretty amazing that if you take a state like California which has such pockets of vast

wealth that has an extensive social safety net that has economic growth.

It still has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

I mean, it is more, there's more people living in poverty in California measured that way than say in Mississippi

which is where you'd expect it. The reason California has so much poverty I think it's twofold. One is simply a statistical question

the fact that it costs a lot to live in California, the high cost of housing, the high cost of food,

the high cost of utilities.

All that means that money simply doesn't go as far.

Somebody living on the same amount of money

in another state would probably not be in poverty,

but you can make $30,000, $40,000 a year in California and still not be able to afford the basic necessities of going forward.

So that makes a huge difference.

In fact, if you look at the two different types of poverty rate, The official Census Bureau numbers puts poverty in California

much lower than the alternative measure, which is what everybody uses, that takes into account the cost of living.

...