Isle incomes increase along with home costs

However, a more accurate poverty figure was released by the Census Bureau just the week before, said Nicole Woo, senior policy analyst with the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center in Honolulu.

The yearly “supplemental poverty measure” includes the cost of living in its matrix. That means some 229,000 people don’t make enough to meet Hawaiʻi’s cost of living rather than the 149,000 accounted for in the latest survey.

The higher figure also boosts Hawaiʻi’s poverty ranking to ninth highest in the country, Woo said.

The Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center, a nonprofit law firm that advocates on behalf of the poor, issued an updated report on poverty in Hawaiʻi earlier this year, showing that while some indicators have improved, many families continue to struggle.

According to the report, Hawaiʻi has the highest cost of living but the lowest wages in the country when adjusted for the amount of money it takes for a family to get by here.

“One in six Hawaiʻi residents live in poverty,” Woo said. “We can see it on our streets. There are a lot of folks who don’t make ends meet.”