Ranking California on income, poverty, uninsured population

The Census Bureau is out this morning with a zillion numbers that can be sliced and diced in lots of ways. The state's 2011 median income was $53,367, which is down a touch from the year before and 6.6 percent higher than the national median. Of course, it's also 22 percent lower than the median income in Maryland. California's poverty rate in 2011 was 16.9 percent, which is slightly higher than the 16.3 percent a year earlier. But for perspective, New Mexico was at 22.2 percent and Louisiana 21.1 percent. Not surprisingly, the state has a high uninsured population - 19.7 percent in 2011, up from 19.4 percent a year earlier. That's four percentage points higher than the national rate, largely due to a large immigrant population. But go back to 1999 and you'll see that the California rate was 19 percent (dropping a couple of points during the subsequent boom years). In other words, not all that much has changed with the macro economic picture in California. Here's access to the whole Census shebang.