Nearly 6 million Californians living in poverty

Fresno has the nation's second-highest poverty rate, at 26.8 percent, Bakersfield is fourth highest (21.2 percent), Modesto is sixth (19.9 percent), and Stockton is seventh (19.2 percent). These four areas often pop up as having some of the worst foreclosure rates, so this isn't a huge surprise. The nationwide rate is 15.1 percent. Statewide, 5.8 million people were living in poverty last year, up from 5.1 million the year before. As Capitol Alert points out, that's more than the populations of many states. Stunning. The numbers are from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The welfare report, also derived from the American Community Survey, says that the proportion of California families receiving welfare at some point during the year increased from 3.7 percent in 2009 to 4 percent in 2010. Both numbers were well above of the national rates of 2.6 and 2.9 percent. The survey analysis found that while 449,059 California families received welfare support in 2009 and the number increased to 500,432 in 2010, by far the largest numerical increase of any state.