San Diego County is a tough place to live for people struggling to afford health care, rent, food and internet access.
How many people? And how tough?
A new report by the San Diego Regional Policy & Innovation Center aims to answer that. It presents a detailed statistical snapshot of how county households are faring, with findings about how many San Diegans are experiencing poverty and its associated adverse consequences — from incarceration to health problems to homelessness.
While the report sometimes hints at solutions and points to what approaches are ineffective, the study’s primary aim was to document and demonstrate the extent of economic insecurity in this region — and publish data that can be used for philanthropic decision-making.
“What we are really hoping to accomplish is sharing this data with funders, both at the state and national level, to really help them understand the depth of the needs in San Diego,” said Pamela Gray Payton, the chief impact and partnerships officer of the San Diego Foundation, which commissioned the report.
“Our perception is that San Diego, for reasons that are unclear to me, is often not considered to have as great a need for philanthropic support as some other regions of the state,” she said. “We have always believed that there is a great need in San Diego. We certainly see that and hear that from the nonprofits that we’re working with. But we didn’t have the data to support just how grave the situation is. And now we have that data.”
The report, released today, pulled data from 2021, when the county’s economic landscape looked somewhat different. Inflation and interest rates hadn’t started their rise, and unemployment was higher.
Even with today’s tighter labor market, Gray Payton said, many of the region’s employed people aren’t earning enough to afford essential things like housing and food in this expensive region.
Based on that 2021 data, here are the report’s key findings:
- More than 1.2 million people — 38 percent of county residents — lived in households that spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing. And more than 550,000 people spent more than half of their income on housing.
- 219,355 people lacked health insurance.
- Around 11 percent of people — 335,000 — lived below the federal poverty line. To put that figure in perspective, the report said that 93 percent of U.S. counties have a smaller population.
- 35 percent of county residents lived in households that did not earn enough to afford basic expenses.
- 85,956 children in San Diego County lived in poverty.
- More than 16,000 of San Diego County public school students were unhoused, meaning they lacked stable housing. “This does not reflect unhoused youth who are in private schools, homeschooled or who are not in school,” the report said.
One difference between living below the poverty line and not affording basic expenses is that the poverty line is a federal designation, so it doesn’t take the local costs of living into account. With this in mind, the number of people here living in poverty according to the federal definition is far smaller than the number of people who can’t afford basic needs.
The study also looked at problems that might arise when a household can’t afford essential needs.
One such consequence is a lack of health insurance and worsened health outcomes.
Regarding insurance, the report noted that uninsurance was a factor for some people, whether or not they were employed. For example, 14 percent of San Diegans who were Hispanic and employed lacked health insurance.
This “suggests that interventions designed to increase health insurance rates by increasing employment do not work to improve equity in health insurance access,” the authors wrote.
The report named another health impact of poverty that hurts some of the county’s most fragile residents: newborns.
About 6.7 percent of babies were born with a low birth weight — which is linked to serious and sometimes long-term complications.
That’s lower than the national average of around 8.5 percent, according to the CDC.
But the report highlights a racial and socioeconomic dimension to this area of local concern: babies born to Black mothers in this county are more than twice as likely as those born to White mothers to have a low birth rate. This lines up with the almost double rate of Black people — compared to White people — living in homes that can’t afford basic needs.
“It really is a health equity issue,” Gray Payton, who also heads up the foundation’s community impact programs, said. “The lack of access to caring providers who understand the needs of Black and Brown communities is something that is a disparity and a concern here in San Diego, as it I’m sure in most other parts of the country.
“Why does it matter? If children are not born healthy, they’re likely to experience even more challenges growing up.” The problem continues beyond birth, she added, because families of those sick children don’t often have the resources to provide the support those children need.
“Everyone should have access to providers who are listening to them and who care for them, who give them the same attention that they would if they were in a higher income bracket, but it’s hard to get that if your income is limited,” she said.
The San Diego Regional Policy & Innovation Center is a partnership between the San Diego Foundation, the County of San Diego and the Brookings Institution.
