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Census Data Ranks Hawai‘i 9th Highest for Poverty

Paul Downey / Flickr
Paul Downey / Flickr

One in six Hawai‘i residents lives in poverty.  That’s according to new figures from the US Census Bureau….which includes the cost of living as part of the calculation.  The traditional measure of poverty is based only on income.

When you figure in the cost of living, Hawai‘i’s poverty rate skyrockets from 11% of the population to nearly 17%.  Nicole Woo is the senior policy analyst with the Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.  She says the latest figure is a reminder that Hawai‘i’s relatively low unemployment rate only tells part of the state’s true economic story.

Under the traditional measure, about 149,000 Hawaii residents are living in poverty.  But figuring in the cost of living here, that figure rises to 229,000.

Nick Yee’s passion for music developed at an early age, as he collected jazz and rock records pulled from dusty locations while growing up in both Southern California and Honolulu. In college he started DJing around Honolulu, playing Jazz and Bossa Nova sets at various lounges and clubs under the name dj mr.nick. He started to incorporate Downtempo, House and Breaks into his sets as his popularity grew, eventually getting DJ residences at different Chinatown locations. To this day, he is a fixture in the Honolulu underground club scene, where his live sets are famous for being able to link musical and cultural boundaries, starting mellow and building the audience into a frenzy while steering free of mainstream clichés.
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