Misleading Facebook Post: US Poverty is Driven y Politics

Politics | 0 comments

There is a Facebook post going around that deceptively shows US states by poverty to imply that Republican politics introduce poverty. Here is the post/list:

A screenshot displaying a list titled "List Of the US States With the Highest Poverty Rates." It enumerates twelve states with their respective poverty rates in descending order: Mississippi at 19.58%, West Virginia at 17.10%, Arkansas at 16.08%, New Mexico at 18.55%, Louisiana at 18.65%, Kentucky at 16.61%, Alabama at 15.98%, Oklahoma at 15.27%, South Carolina at 14.68%, Tennessee at 14.62%, North Carolina at 13.98%, and Georgia at 14.28%. The list is followed by a comment from "The Other 98%" with a timestamp indicating "12 August at 10:13" and a pondering emoji, stating "wonder what they all have in common 🤔".

This list cuts off arbitrarily to make a point. While there may be truth in the larger picture, selectively using data to make your point isn’t cool.

First, let’s expand the list1:

State or territoryPopulationPopulation under
poverty line		Poverty rate
 Puerto Rico3,227,4571,400,95843.41%
 Mississippi2,883,074564,43919.58%
 Louisiana4,532,187845,23018.65%
 New Mexico2,053,909381,02618.55%
 West Virginia1,755,591300,15217.10%
 Kentucky4,322,881717,89516.61%
 Arkansas2,923,585470,19016.08%
 Alabama4,771,614762,64215.98%
 District of Columbia669,089103,39115.45%
 Oklahoma3,833,712585,52015.27%
 South Carolina4,950,181726,47014.68%
 Tennessee6,603,468965,21314.62%
 Georgia10,238,3691,461,57214.28%
 Texas28,013,4463,984,26014.22%
 Arizona7,012,999990,52814.12%
 North Carolina10,098,3301,411,93913.98%
 Michigan9,753,5411,337,25613.71%
 Ohio11,350,3781,546,01113.62%
 New York19,009,0982,581,04813.58%
 Florida20,793,6282,772,93913.34%
 Missouri5,942,813772,99213.01%
 Indiana6,491,632838,14912.91%
 South Dakota849,910108,86312.81%
 Montana1,036,490132,47612.78%
 Nevada2,987,817381,69512.78%
 California38,589,8824,853,43412.58%
 Oregon4,096,744506,55812.36%

There is no shortage of blue states in that list.

The overall US poverty rate is 13.15%, and guess what? There are plenty of red states below that. Here is the visualization:

United States map showing the percentage of population below the poverty line by state, based on the American Community Survey from 2016 to 2020. States are color-coded to indicate poverty levels: dark red for 18% or more, red for 16% to 18%, orange for 14% to 16%, light orange for 12% to 14%, and pale orange for less than 12%. The overall percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is 13.1%. The top five states with the highest poverty rates are Mississippi at 19.6%, Louisiana at 19.0%, New Mexico at 18.4%, West Virginia at 17.1%, and Kentucky at 16.3%. The bottom five states with the lowest poverty rates are New Hampshire at 7.2%, Utah at 8.9%, Maryland at 9.0%, Minnesota at 9.3%, and New Jersey at 9.5%.

But that still doesn’t tell a good story, here is povery by county:

Heat map of the United States showing the percentage of the population living below the poverty line by county, based on data from the American Community Survey 2016-2020. Darker shades of red indicate higher percentages of poverty. The map legend indicates that red tones range from light (less than 5% poverty) to dark (30% or more poverty). The overall percentage of Americans living below the poverty line during this period is noted as 13.1%. The image also includes a reference to New York City for geographical context.

With the data provided you could conclude that poverty is driven by politics.

Atlanta has a poverty rate of 17% compared to 12.3% for GA overall even though Atlanta is blue.

Or you could conclude that it’s due to race.

Or you could conclude that it’s due to geography.

This isn’t even adjusted for the cost of living!

This article from Time shows CA, FL, MI and NY as the states with the four highest poverty rates after such adjustments.

Like nearly every political issue in the news today the data is nuanced and the causes are nuanced.

P.S. You can find fuller data on the adjusted measure (SPM) at the US Census Bureau – https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/supplemental-poverty-measure.html

  1. Via Wikipedia which takes it from the US Census Burea ↩︎
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