Hacker News Reader

Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

That's not even true, though. The highest concentration of Scandinavian-Americans is is in North Dakota, where they make up 1/3 of the state's population, and have a poverty rate that is significantly above zero.

View on HN

Actually they are a lot less of the North Dakota population[1] being 4.7% of the population.

For 2016[2], North Dakota had a poverty rate of 10.7 (10th lowest in the US). Of that 10.7%, 8% were listed as White.

Given this, I don't think a significant amount of Scandinavian-Americans in North Dakota are in poverty. I guess any number is not zero, but North Dakota is probably the wrong state to use for a demonstration.

1) http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/north-dakota-populat...

2) https://talkpoverty.org/state-year-report/north-dakota-2017-... https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ND/PST045217#vi...

> Actually they are a lot less of the North Dakota population[1] being 4.7% of the population.

Your reference [1] says that 30.8% of the state's population reports Norwegian ancestry, and 4.7% reports Swedish ancestry. Overall that's pretty close to the 1/3 I ballparked for Scandinavian-American.

Opps, I forgot the Norwegian[1]. Well, 30.8% of 8% of 10.7% is a pretty low number and assumes that the 8% is an even distribution over the White poverty rate.

1) I might still hold a grudge over the damn lefse and not being told its was potato before eating it. I was not in good shape 30 minutes later.

I think you are misreading your source. You seem to be interpreting it as saying that 8% of people in poverty are white, but what it actually says is that 8% of white people are in poverty.

Assuming that the poverty rate is evenly distributed over the white population, then the poverty rate for Scandinavians would also be 8%.

I'm not misreading the source, else 100% of the people in North Dakota would be in poverty. The Native Americans are listed as 35% and that is not their percentage of the population.

Then why are you taking 8% of 10.7%? The correct way to interpret the statistics is not "10.7% of people are in poverty and 8% of those are white", it's "8% of white people are in poverty and that 8% overlaps with the 10.7% of all people who are in poverty".

That is an excellent comeback (by Friedman), but maybe it's something that sounds good but is in fact inaccurate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com