California Wellness Stats

The Sacramento Bee's Dan Weintraub has some charts available on his December 21 California Insider showing how the state has fared over the last few years in a number of areas. Crime, tracked from '94 until present comes first. Looks like violent crime has declined recently with property crimes rising slightly.

Next, he tracks Poverty and Air Pollution since 2002, Home Ownership and Welfare Cases since 1996. You'll have to scroll down past a few other entries to get to the chart on Welfare Cases.

Overall, it looks like some improvement just by the appearance of the graphs but, when you think about it, statewide statistics might really mean nothing to people living in the different areas of the state. One city or county might well have high crime rates while the next one might not and that's what really matters when you live somewhere. Not how well the state's doing as a whole.

Besides, you know what they say about statistics.