Talk:List of lowest-income places in the United States

Notes

"The 4th poorest is 35th", what does this mean?? 69.140.225.153 (talk) 20:20, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

It should probably be noted that Boys Town, Nebraska, is an Enclave within Omaha, and that much of its population are children who are going through their reformation program, and thus have no income. Boys Town, as a whole, is run largely on donations, and is a charitable organization. It should be discussed as to whether Boys Town should be included on this list due to these special circumstances. Yes it has its own postal code, school system, and geographical boundaries, but that does not necessarily qualify it to be included in a list such as this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.48.218.242 (talk) 01:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I think we should combine highest & lowest places, counties, etc. into their respective articles and use the sort tool. - User:Qenzaf —Preceding undated comment added 03:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC).

The list "All Locations" needs a description of what the figures refer to. Also listing of Long Beach, NY appears to be vandalism.--Pjepjepje (talk) 04:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

"Ericatown, MA" (number one on the list) does not appear to exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.74.123 (talk) 03:57, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

New data based on the 2010 census

This list uses data from the 2000 census, under the 2010 census it's completely different. In lieu of replacing it completely (it's possible there is some qualitative difference between both sets of data that I'm not seeing), I'm going to create a new subsection for the updated list, based on data from the 2010 census. And I'll upload a .csv copy of the data I got from the census website as reference. Black-Velvet 12:59, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I commented out the updated 2010 data for the time being, as I have not been able to verify the numbers given. The first table one encounters in this article is for median household income, but it appears that that is not what is shown here. Is it per capita income? Even if it is, I haven't been able to find the table that has these figures. As you may know, the 2010 census did not collect income data, so the figures are either from the American Community Survey or some other source. Could you post a link to the source that you used? Thanks. --Ken Gallager (talk) 19:25, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Title

"Poor" is a subjective term. Median household income alone shouldn't be used as an indicator of whether or not a place is "poor." Cost of living and poverty rate should be taken into account. Bms4880 (talk) 23:36, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

{{subst:RM top|move the page to [[List of lowest-income places in the United States, per the discussion below.}} List of the poorest places in the United States → List of lowest-income places in the United States – "Poor" is a subjective term. The article uses census income data as its primary source, which doesn't necessarily equate to "rich" or "poor." Bms4880 (talk) 22:10, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support, as nominator. Bms4880 (talk) 22:10, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support. This would mirror the terminology used in List of highest-income places in the United States. --Ken Gallager (talk) 22:18, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
• Suggest despite the mirroring List of low-income places in the United States

Its the difference in telling people that they live in the lowest income place and giving them the information and letting them work it out for themselves.

alternatively move both articles:

List of highest-income places in the United States to List of highest-income locations in the United States and

List of the poorest places in the United States to List of low-income locations in the United States

"Locations" rolls off the tongue with "list" and "low" and is just as accurate. This is a stretch to mention but localities may be related to communities. A place can be anywhere. -Gregkaye ✍♪ 10:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Comment – Did you mean List of high-income locations in the United States? (not "highest"-income) I prefer "places", because that's a Census term for a location that has statistical information. --Ken Gallager (talk) 20:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support, but I prefer @Gregkaye 's alternate suggestions. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 16:42, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support as per nomination and previous discussion. According to what Ken Gallager said, we should stick with "places" if that's the term used in the source (with good reason). And "lowest" makes more sense to use than "low", because the article specifically refers to the extreme (otherwise it'd be a somewhat indiscriminate list). --V2Blast (talk) 09:42, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

All data in dispute

What's going on with this article? Whence come the data? The sole citation in the main section goes to a page that currently lists nationwide data only; since the Census Bureau generally puts new data in new pages, getting rid of old data by taking down pages instead of changing them, I strongly doubt that they previously had all this information on that page. Secondly, the table mixes race and ethnicity in the United States Census; Hispanic/Latino status is not racial but ethnic, and someone identifying as either one is also identified under a racial category, so in official Census data, one will always get 100% (aside from rounding errors) when adding White, Black or African American, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, and (if applicable) Other race. This table, on the other hand, treats Hispanic/Latino as a race; in an extreme case, Las Palmas-Juarez, Texas has just 5.0% of its residents as members of any race, and 95.0% of its residents are Hispanic or Latino. Nyttend (talk) 22:23, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Disputing accuracy of article and proposing its possible deletion

This article lists the poorest places in the United States using as its source the American Community Survey (ACS) of 2017. I can't find the tables of the ACS online to verify the source of the data -- but to put it mildly the statistics cited in this article are wildly divergent from other available statistics. Some of the median household income statistics cited for some places in this article would be more representative of the poorest places in the world rather than the United States. Yes, we have inequality in the U.S., and, yes, we have extreme poverty in some places but to accept that there are places in the U.S. with median household incomes of 3, 4, or 5 thousand dollars annually is just plain ridiculous. (2017 media household income in the U.S. as a whole is correctly cited as $57,652 in the article)

To give just a couple of examples of what I have called ridiculous statistics in this article. the median family income in Villanueva CDP, New Mexico cited in this article is $4,658 dollars. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2021 the median family income in Villanueva was $17,539. [1] Villanueva is indeed one of the poorest places in the U.S. but nothing has happened in Villanueva between 2017 and 2021 to account for the 400 percent difference in the statistics. The 2021 estimate is believable; the 2017 estimate in this article is not believable.

To given another example of a ridiculous stat, Lower Santan Village, Arizona according to this article had a median household income of $5,857 in 2017. But, the U.S. Census gives Lower Santan Village a median household income of $26,146 in 2021.[2] Again, nothing has changed in Lower Santan to account for a nearly 500 percent increase in median household income in four years.

Some of the data in the existing article regarding the median household income of Puerto Rican communities may be accurate. However, sorting out what is good data, what is bad, and updating the whole would be a monumental task. Moreover, there are other similar articles on Wikipedia which cover similar material. List of lowest-income counties in the United States is one.

I'm not sure what the best remedy for this article is: (1) delete the whole article; (2) delete the section on poorest places; (or) (3) put tags on the article concerning its unreliability. Opinions? Smallchief (talk) 12:55, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

More up to date (2023, last 12 months or last 5 years for small areas like places, back to 2010) data is available for all of the items on this table here https://data.census.gov/table I believe. I have just downloaded the median income and poverty data tables for every state, county and place for 2023. I am not the best person to do the job of replacing the data in the table, which I believe to be, at least in principle, useful and valid and offer something that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lowest-income_counties_in_the_United_States page does not offer [I can't do it because I am dying from motor neuron disease and have to choose what I spend my time doing because it is limited.]

My reason for accessing the data is to identify places for which I can search on public domain image websites for an illustration of poverty in the USA for a painting for the International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations (I am a biologist, educator and artist) in the context of inequality in care available for people living with ALS or other motor neuron diseases in the USA. I would have used the data from the table as it exists had I not been alerted by the Factual Accuracy disputed flag at the top of the page, so thank you for that.

My points are two:

Firstly, I believe that the table would be useful if it were correctly populated (which it is not and is also out of date). The 'places' have a reality in that they are derived from the census definitions at the most granular level available, which is for much smaller areas than counties and might therefore be expected to pick up the genuinely poorest localities in the USA.

Secondly, that the data to construct a correct version of the table does exist and since it offers something the poorest counties page does not, it is a job worth someone doing. If I were going to do it I would probably make at least two separate tables, one for the 50 states plus DC, and a second for Puerto Rica, because I suspect that in practical terms that might be necessary in order to produce a usable list of places within the 50 states plus DC. [I am not American so my apologies for any misunderstandings].

I hope that this is useful DrRickZTTwo (talk) 21:14, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

My apologies for replying to myself but I have forgotten how to edit my talk contributions [courtesy of the cognitive changes induced by the motor neuron disease with which I live]. I have now looked more closely at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lowest-income_counties_in_the_United_States page and realised that I had missed the existence of the second data table. Someone who understands the USA much better than I do needs to think through whether there is added value beyond the 50 counties/parishes with lowest median household income table, based on 2023 data. In other words, does my previous argument [about the potential benefit in being able to identify the poorest localities at a granular level from the 2023 [or future] census using the 'places' data] is actually valid, and the table useful to anyone else but me. If not, then it will be a lot of work for little return. If however, there are, potentially, a number of people who would use such a table then the work would be worthwhile. Whether it should be on a separate page from the lowest income counties is also something which needs thinking through by someone who is a potential user of this data and is a US citizen, or at least an expert on the USA, which I am not. Many thanks DrRickZTTwo (talk) 21:34, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I've been advocating the deletion of this article for more than 2 years. Somebody delete it. I'd do it if I knew how. Smallchief (talk) 13:00, 28 March 2025 (UTC)