Opinion: Sorry Gov.: State's poverty didn't improve from 50th to 17th

A few weeks after the recent election, New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and said New Mexico has gone from 50th to 17th on child poverty in the nation.

This is simply untrue.

The governor is conflating the U.S. Census Bureau’s traditional poverty measure in which we remain 50th and its supplemental measure, which includes several federal and state government programs and New Mexico performs better on. To be completely clear, these are very different measures. Conflating them is simply not accurate. The governor should stop.

A recent news story by Dan Boyd of the Albuquerque Journal noted “The supplemental measure factors in government benefits, like New Mexico’s state-subsidized lunches for public school students. It also includes tax credits and cost-of-living calculations.”

Boyd quoted Tax and Revenue Secretary Stephanie Schardin Clarke calling the supplemental poverty measure “more accurate than the traditional poverty ranking.” But is it really? New Mexico’s “supplemental poverty measure (never as low as the traditional measure) has improved slightly relative to other states in recent years. Has there been a big improvement in outcomes for New Mexico children in the last 5-10 years? I’d argue that if anything, New Mexico children are doing worse than ever.

Specifically, the Annie E. Casey “Kids Count” Index again put New Mexico’s children at 50th in the nation overall this year. Notably, that report uses the “traditional” not the “supplemental” poverty number to calculate child poverty in New Mexico and other states.

And then there is education. Several years ago powerful “progressive” Sen. Mimi Stewart commented that “New Mexico doesn’t know how to teach poor students.”

But by the “supplemental” index New Mexico’s children aren’t poor at all. Instead, they are 17th best off in the nation. Sadly, that recalculation hasn’t helped New Mexico’s education outcomes, which saw our students come in dead last in all four categories in the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2023.

More recent data have not shown significant improvement in student achievement in New Mexico. Of course, simply recalculating data doesn’t improve real world conditions.

What we do know is that the supplemental measure serves the governor’s political interests. She wants to be seen as successfully improving conditions for children and believes that government programs like “free” school lunches are the way to reduce poverty.

She knows that the media and even the most discerning members of the public will fail to understand that she is conflating very data. New Mexico children have suffered greatly under her and it seems like she is using sneaky data tricks to fool people into thinking things are getting better for our kids when they aren’t.

The reality is that CYFD is a failure. Our schools are worse off than ever. Crime is out-of-control and while the state is flush with cash from oil and gas the benefits of this boom have not been felt by average New Mexicans. According to data from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico’s 0-24 population is expected to decline by 20% by 2040.

We hope the Legislature has some robust debates about the status of New Mexico children (and how to improve it) in the upcoming 60-day session, but the discussion needs to be based on accurate and realistic data, not conflated and confused data.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, which promotes limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility. Contact him at:

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