The poverty rate in the metropolitan area is 11.3 percent. Oregonians outside the Portland metropolitan area are 30 percent more likely to live in poverty than their urban counterparts. Crime, though not unknown in non-metro areas, is far lower outside the Portland metropolitan area. State prisons are full of Portland area criminals. Approximately 47 percent of the inmate population of state correctional facilities is from the Portland metropolitan area, only slightly higher than the region's 45 percent share of the state population.
Many crimes are more prevalent outside Portland.
Rural Oregon is populated with hard working, self-sufficient families, who are less likely to take a government hand out than their urban brethren. Government transfer payments Social Security, Medicare, welfare, unemployment and other payments account for 20 percent of personal income outside the metropolitan area, but only about 13 percent of Portland area income. With about 45 percent of the state's population, the metro area has only 37 percent of Oregon Health Plan expenditures. Portland's economy prospers in large part because of its role as a transporter, marketer, consumer and financier of the state's resource-based industries. Even the 40 percent figure is inflated because it counts the flow of Eastern Washington and Montana wheat through the Port of Portland.