High living costs make people poor

There’s no question that the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe recession it spawned are widening California’s economic divide.
California already had the nation’s highest rate of functional poverty before this year began, as calculated by the Census Bureau using cost-of-living as well as income data, with nearly 20% of the state’s 40 million people impoverished. The Public Policy Institute of California calculates that another fifth of Californians are