That’s why I said the Seattle metro is well off. The rest of Washington, I don’t have stats, but going through those towns I definitely don’t get a feeling they are affluent. Oregon is a pretty unique case. The overall poverty rate is not particularly bad, but the child poverty rate is one of the worst in the country. The number of well-off out-of-state yuppies moving to gentrified parts of Portland probably skews down the poverty ratings, because outside of the Portland metro Oregon is a very poor state.
Well, there does not appear to be a way to statistically quantify your gut feeling about that.
I personally am always struck by how much better off the rural areas of Washington, Oregon and California seem compared to the rural areas of the Northern Rockies and Great Plains that are my usual stomping grounds.
It’s all the fault of the spotted owls
Maybe if you’re just checking out the boutique towns like Aspen, Grass Valley and Ashland. Have you ever been to Falls City or Toledo, Oregon? Or Kelso, Washington? Definitely not what I’d call paragons of affluence. States like Wyoming, North Dakota and Iowa statistically are much more well off.
Very good points. There’s a major (and, perhaps, critical) difference between average income per capita (or average income per square mile) and the presence or absence of poverty. Poverty in the South and Appalachia is a big problem, yes, but you will also find significant populations of farmers and blue-collar workers who are making ends meet in a low-cost of living area, despite the fact that their tax return shows relatively little income. They may be “low income” by your definition, but they are not starving or facing foreclosure. Compare that with some neighborhoods of San Francisco where you can make $70,000 a year and still be poor because all the homes cost more than half a million each.
I blame it on San Andreas; it’s all his fault.
If you’re going to cherry pick, what’s the point in using real numbers?
Yes, you’re probably going to find individual towns that are poorer compared to the average for entire states? What’s the sense in that? You can’t pick cherries any harder than that.
Worse, it’s not like you live in those towns, either. You currently live in a fairly affluent (by overall measures) area but want to complain about how your entire state/region’s situation is to blame.
Ok, complain away, but don’t expect people to take you seriously that it’s true by any objective standard. Everybody has their problems. It’s not a contest to claim “worst living conditions ever”.
This is as far into the thread as I’ve read. (I’m working, and I have to urinate like a thoroughbred.)
Indeed. California may have more poor people, but L.A. County alone has a larger population than many countries. (10 million, as of 2013.)
Air conditioning? When I lived in Lancaster (Antelope Valley, Mojave Desert) we didn’t have air conditioning. We had a swamp cooler on the roof, and it was fine except for a couple of weeks during monsoon season. Why have expensive air conditioning when you don’t need it? Where I live now, there is no air conditioning or swamp cooler in my house. The hottest part of Summer gets into the mid-80s. Again, a/c isn’t strictly necessary.
I am shocked to find that fully half of all the towns in any given state are below average.
I’ve never been to or heard of Falls City, but I’ve been to Kelso and Toledo and find using those as examples of grinding poverty to be absolutely baffling. Kelso is kind of bland in a generic suburbia kind of way but seems like an okay places to live. The area around Toledo seems downright quaint to me, like the kind of place you’d want to retire.
Both of them are somewhat past their prime with the decline of the timber industry, but they still have reasonably well-functioning economies. They’re pretty much the archetypal sleepy towns, where if the opportunity and excitement of the city don’t lure you away you can stay and make a perfectly comfortable living. They’re nothing like the sort of utter economic breakdown you see in the actual grindingly poor parts of the country.
“Swamp Yankees”, please! 
Well, yes, but, to be fair, he was comparing the poorest towns in one state to the average of other states.
Not that it’s any better. I doubt there’s that much difference when comparing average poverty among the states. At least not such a large difference it won’t be swamped by the variance within any given state.
There’s a lot of cherry picking in some of the poorer parts of the Central Valley in CA. 
Then you might want to be sitting down for this - as of 2012, 35% of all raods in the United States were unpaved. 22% were not only unpaved, but unsurfaced as well (no shells, gravel, stone, etc. - just packed dirt). So, unless Portland has less than 200 total miles of road, you’re above average. Congratulations!
Funny thing about averages, they can tell a completely misleading story.
I live on one of the (hundreds of) unpaved/unsurfaced roads in the Georgia county with the most miles of unpaved roads. It’s totally a thing. Believe it or not, my neighbors aren’t poor. I used to live on an unpaved/unsurfaced road in the fifth most populous county in Georgia, inside city limits. Road budgets aren’t unlimited, so, for example, a 1.5 mile road with only six houses and a small business aren’t that high on the priority list. Nor a cul-de-sac in a small suburban town. Some of us actually like dirt roads!
Really, the OP needs to get out more.
Also, I’d love to have a mediocre food scene locally like Portland’s. (And Portland is at the very top of the list of cities I’d move to if I couldn’t live in or near coastal Georgia. I love Portland!)
Yeesh, no kidding. Can’t even keep it to one thread.
Appearances often deceive. It’s more like you literally can’t live in those cities unless you commute regularly to Corvallis or Portland or whatever, or you’re a retiree. I don’t think anyone can deny that the Oregon Coast is extremely poor overall. Those Great Plains towns might look poor but the people there tend to own large tracts of land or have high paying jobs in the oil industry. In Oregon’s mountains and rainforest there’s literally no opportunity aside from badly paid tourism jobs and what little is left of the timber industry.
This map shows poverty by county. The worst spots are, almost without exception. indian reservations.
What alternate USA do you live in? This isn’t true at all.
Better yet: cite?
And you’d best find more than a town here or there where this is true. A few towns out of an entire state does not lead to “tend”.
I lived in the plains. It’s like anywhere else. A few people have high paying jobs. A few people have large tracts of land. But most people don’t make that much money or have much land. And several are dirt poor living paycheck to paycheck - if they have a paycheck at all.
Worse, oil prices are down by more than half over the last 8 months. Those oil boom towns in North Dakota (I have no clue where else you think they exist) are already starting to empty out and hundreds of thousands of jobs have already disappeared.
It’s pretty clear that you are completely impervious to facts and are simply looking for someone to reenforce your crazy world view. I’m done, and I would urge everyone else to let this dead horse die the death it long deserves.