Math is Hard

Teresa Ghilarducci, at the New School for Social Research, describes a trip to North Carolina, which left a colleague "shell shocked." The colleague asked: "How can it be legal to have so much poverty in such a wealthy state?"

Aside from the intriguing notion of ending  poverty by simply passing a law making it illegal -- what an idea!  We could do the same with gun violence -- there is the following observation.

According to Kids Count, New Hampshire has the lowest rate of child poverty, at 11 percent. Ranked worst is Mississippi, where a third of children are poor. But Mississippi is poor over all; it has the lowest median income in the nation. And New Hampshire is rich; its median income is the third highest. I get that. So the child poverty numbers may say more about income than about the management of the state budgets.
But let's look at North Carolina. It is the 39th richest state, and yet it ranks 12th for the percentage of children living in poverty--only 11 states fare worse.

There are fifty states.  The 39th richest state is the same as the 12th poorest state.  And NC ranks 12th in the percentage of The Children™ living in poverty.
h/t WSJ Best of the Web