Sunlight Findings

Nearly half of the estimated 365,000 households who left the Bay for the Central Valley between 2010 and 2016 earned less than $50,000 a year

Low-income families in the United States tend to live in neighborhoods that offer limited opportunities for upward income mobility.

Almost 20% of Californians lack enough resources to meet basic needs. Another one in five live very close to the poverty line.

“Affordable and stable housing plays a critical role in supporting the health and wellbeing of children. Research from Children’s HealthWatch shows public investment in housing—including housing for homeless families and rental assistance for food-insecure families—improves the health outcomes of vulnerable infants and young children and lowers health care spending.”

Safety net programs generally supplement earnings to help families avoid severe economic need. These programs—which include cash assistance, nutrition assistance, housing subsidies, and low-income tax credits—make up 44 percent of poor families’ resources statewide and substantially mitigate poverty.

"More than 1 of every 10 people in the Bay Area today are hungry. But they are not only the visibly famished, digging through the trash in Union Square for the remains of someone’s lunch. They are low-income families that have jobs and housing but have still fallen through the cracks during the Bay Area’s spectacular rebound from the recession, as it has become the country’s richest and most expensive region."

“Parents and caregivers are a child’s first exposure to the world around them. The quality of relationships between children and their parents and caregivers, and the environment in which those relationships develop, play a significant role in a child’s cognitive, emotional, physical, and social development.”

Investment in homelessness prevention, rapid re-housing programs and new housing opportunities stabilizes families and has cost savings.

Given the rise in the suburbanization of poverty, there is an increased need for inter‐jurisdictional coordination and capacity building among suburban nonprofits and foundations.

In 2015, CalFresh moved roughly 800,000 Californians out of poverty.

“In California, roughly 80 percent of young children ages birth to two and 40 percent of children ages birth to five are cared for by informal caregivers.”

1 in 2 children in California get health care through Medicaid. Medicaid allows 4.63 million Californian kids -- who would not otherwise have access to health care -- to see doctors when they get sick and to get the vaccinations and screenings they need to stay healthy.

Making Ends Meet is an interactive tool that shows the cost of supporting a family in different parts of the state.

Poverty, food insecurity, and poor nutrition have serious detrimental impacts on the health, development, and well-being of infants and young children in the short and long terms.

“Play is essential to the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being of children beginning in early childhood.”

"When everyone has the security that health insurance provides, our communities are stronger and our future is brighter."

Participation in the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) leads to healthier babies, more nutritious diets for families, better health care for children, and higher academic achievement for students.

“The neighborhood context, in conjunction with other factors, such as child characteristics, parenting, and family resources, matters to the well-being of developing children.”

1 out of 6 Californians are served by community health centers

“Adults and children in families make up about 33 percent of the homeless population.”

“When parents identify, seek, and receive respectful and timely concrete support in times of need, this helps to ensure they and their children receive the basic necessities everyone deserves in order to grow (e.g., healthy food, a safe environment), as well as specialized medical, mental health, social, educational, or legal services.”

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." - Martin Luther King, Jr. in a speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights, 1966

Only 19 homes are available for every 100 low-income renters looking in San Mateo County and only 26 homes are available for every 100 looking in Alameda County. This interactive map from Urban Institute shows the number of affordable homes available to low-income renters needing homes across the U.S. View the map to see the gap in your county.

California Poverty Measure (CPM) data from 2013-2015 show that 23% of children statewide lived in poverty and 5% lived in deep poverty. In the absence of social safety net programs, it is estimated that the child poverty rate would have been 14 percentage points higher and the deep poverty rate 13 percentage points higher during this period.

One in six children in the U.S. live in food insecure households. In California, nearly one in five children are food insecure.

“In a family with two working parents earning low wages, each parent would have to work 147 hours per week to avoid paying more than the federally recommended 7% of income on the cost of child care for their infant.”

Explore data on women’s progress relating to reproductive rights in 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the United States