A report by the California Policy Institute documents this increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the income ladder. While the income of the poorest 20 percent of families increased 10 percent during that time period, that still represented a 13 percent drop from 1989 and a whopping 22 percent less in real dollars than in 1969. With prices rising for many necessities such as housing, even these increases do not represent any real increase in living standards. In Silicon Valley, competition to reach a billion dollars in net worth is the avowed aim of the high-tech moguls who make the Valley's investment and production decisions. The figures do not allow for saving for retirement or children's college education.
Home ownership is out of reach for a majority of families.
One in three children are poor in 13 of 58 counties in California. Poverty is endemic, if not increasing, in the southern San Joaquin Valley, the heartland of California's huge agricultural industry. Many agricultural workers continue to live the equivalent of an old-South sharecropper existence in tarpaper shacks, plywood shanties and wooden boxcars with no running water. Fresno is now the sixth poorest school district in the nation, barely trailing East St. Louis and Detroit. Fully 40 percent of the state's poverty is located in Los Angeles County.