I got to speak with Kelly Cunningham this afternoon; he's the economist for the San Diego Institute for Policy Research, the conservative think tank founded by Steve Francis.
He shared some thoughts from his examination of the Census numbers released yesterday: Out of 500-some metropolitan statistical areas, San Diego rates 162 for its poverty level. Among the 30-some such areas in California, San Diego rates 12th.
But because of a much higher cost of living in this region than in many nationwide, Cunningham said the threshold accounts for just a fraction of the people who live in poverty here -- an analysis that jives with a lot of what Murtaza Baxamusa, economist with the left-leaning Center on Policy Initiatives, said yesterday.
