California’s Rich-Poor Gap: The Reality May Surprise You Director Ann Huff Stevens quoted in KQED News
KQED News, August 11, 2016
Where in California has the gap between rich and poor grown most
since the Great Recession?
The Bay Area, home of your Zuckerbergs and Steyers and some of
the most expensive zip codes in the country, seems like
a logical answer. Over the past decade, what other part of
California has minted as many members of the “1 percent” as
Silicon Valley?
Those California regions with the biggest chasm between rich and
poor typically have some of the poorest populations in the state.
In the Central Valley, for example, households in the bottom 10
percent of the income distribution made less than $10,000 per
year (adjusted for a family of four). Their equivalents in the
Bay Area made more than double that.
“When you’re talking incomes that low, you’re likely talking
about people who work in agriculture and who really have highly
variables incomes because they’re not at a traditional job,” says
Ann Stevens, director of the UC Davis Center for Poverty
Research. “Or they may be doing temporary work or field work
or running a small agricultural business.”
