First NameAssignment 106/17/2015

I estimate around 40% of the population is below the poverty level. It is my understanding that a majority of Americans identify with the wrong social class, many identifying with middle class when they’re actually lower class. I would estimate that the states sharing a border with Mexico will have a higher percentage of persons above the poverty level. I estimate that the Northeast, with the exception of New York will have lower poverty levels. My reasoning is that I never hear about crime in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, etc. Areas with high-crime rates tend to have higher numbers of persons living in poverty.

The two top states are California and Texas. This is inconclusive because the data isn’t relative to the size of the population.

The top three states with the highest percentage of persons below the poverty levels are: Mississippi (24%), New Mexico (21.9%) and Louisiana (19.8%). The top states with the lowest percentage of persons below the poverty levels are: New Hampshire (8.7%), Alaska (9.3%) and Maryland (10.1%).

Percentage of persons in all 50 states below poverty level is: 15.8%.

I was exactly spot on with my estimate; however, I was very close. The top states with the highest poverty level were located in the south. I would understand this to be conducive of the lack of job opportunities in those areas. I was close in my estimate of top states with the lowest percentage of persons living in poverty. The top states were located in the northeast and Alaska. To be fair, I would’ve thought Alaska would have a higher percentage of persons living in poverty due to the extreme weather. That is to say, job opportunities would be scarce, as most people don’t move to Alaska for the booming job opportunities.

Figure 1 This map shows the percentage of persons living below the poverty level by state. Darker shades indicate a larger number of persons living in poverty.

Source: StatePoverty2013.xls (http://qrc.depaul.edu/tconnor/ExcelFiles/StatePoverty2013.xls)

The second map doesn’t take into account the importance of population size and its affect on the total picture. While this map may be useful for some purposes, it’s not useful for ours. This map is relating the data to the single largest state with the highest number of people living in poverty, California. The better idea would be to compare the number of people living in poverty relative to the states population. This gives us an accurate representation of each states poverty level relative to its population.

Bonus1. What was the population of the U.S. in 2013?316.5 million

2. What was the population of Illinois in 2013?12.89 million