Are Alabamians as poor as they say we are?

Last week, the Census Bureau reported that Alabama has the eighth highest poverty rate in the nation.

Regarding those numbers, the Mobile Press-Register asks the same question I asked four months ago (with a follow-up here):

Every time the U.S. Census Bureau issues a report on poverty, Alabama finds itself labeled one of the poorest states. It makes no difference to the Census Bureau that the state's economy is growing and its unemployment rate is well below the national average. It's irrelevant that some surveys show the state's per-capita income also is rising.

State officials can only shake their heads and mutter to themselves, "Thank God for Mississippi and Louisiana." Those two states are even poorer than Alabama, according to the Census Bureau.

But what if Alabama really isn't that poor? What if the Deep South states don't deserve their reputation as the Third World of the United States?

An intriguing study released in May by the Public Policy Institute of California provides evidence that the nation's most populous states, California and New York, have a greater percentage of people living in poverty than Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. ...

The Census Bureau does not adjust its poverty figures to reflect regional differences in housing costs, utility rates and other living expenses. Ms. Reed applied a cost-of-living analysis to the poverty figures and came up with a list that had Washington, D.C., New York and California in first, second and third place, respectively.