>>241That's part of the reason why the percentage is so low. There's this statistic from the U.S called the supplemental poverty measure, which includes things like the average cost of living in from state to state. The normal, 50 year old statistic from the census bureau determines the national average cost of living, not state by state. When cost of living is taken into account, the northeast drops off to second place and the midwest becomes the least poor. The west has the highest amount of people in poverty and the South is about 1% more poor than the northeast.