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2024 Census data: Oklahoma ranks as 8th poorest state

By: Dave Hamby
September 11, 2025 // Updated: September 12, 2025
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey, released Sept. 11, show that Oklahoma’s poverty rate was 14.9 percent, which means that more than 1 in 7 state residents live in poverty. While the state’s overall poverty rate… Read more More...

Recent Posts

In The Know: Oklahoma inmates hit with salmonella outbreak, several hospitalized

By: Kate Richey
November 22, 2013 // Updated: November 22, 2013
In The Know is a daily synopsis of Oklahoma policy-related news and blogs. Inclusion of a story does not necessarily mean endorsement by the Oklahoma Policy Institute. You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail. Today… Read more [More...]

Oklahoma Assets Network: Take action to support working families

By: Kate Richey
November 21, 2013 // Updated: May 2, 2019
In many ways Oklahoma is well positioned to offer residents opportunities to get ahead – our lower than average cost of living, booming energy sector, and low overall unemployment rate are key ingredients for financial prosperity.  Yet too many other… Read more [More...]

New third-grade reading law could block thousands of special ed student from advancing to fourth grade

By: David Blatt
November 20, 2013 // Updated: May 2, 2019
A major change in Oklahoma’s education system is about to kick in. Under new provisions of the Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA), third-grade students who do not attain a satisfactory score on a state standardized  reading test will be retained in… Read more [More...]

In The Know: Officials says state employees’ salary-to-benefit ratio ‘out of whack’

By: Gene Perry
// Updated: November 20, 2013
In The Know is a daily synopsis of Oklahoma policy-related news and blogs. Inclusion of a story does not necessarily mean endorsement by the Oklahoma Policy Institute. You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail. Today… Read more [More...]

We don’t know if the Quality Jobs Program is paying off (Guest post: Mark Lash)

By: Mark Lash
November 18, 2013 // Updated: May 1, 2019
Mark Lash is a retired federal employee who follows Oklahoma policymaking, tries to understand it, and sometime even writes about it. See Mark’s previous post about the Quality Jobs Program here. Oklahoma’s Quality Jobs Program began in 1993 and has… Read more [More...]

Weekly Wonk November 17, 2013

By: Carly Putnam
November 17, 2013 // Updated: July 25, 2015
The Weekly Wonk is a summary of Oklahoma Policy Institute’s events, publications, blog posts, and coverage. Numbers of the Day and Policy Notes are from our daily news briefing, In The Know. Click here to subscribe to In The Know. … Read more [More...]

In The Know: Commission urges lawmakers to address pension funding

By: Kate Richey
November 15, 2013 // Updated: November 15, 2013
In The Know is a daily synopsis of Oklahoma policy-related news and blogs. Inclusion of a story does not necessarily mean endorsement by the Oklahoma Policy Institute. You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail. Today… Read more [More...]

The State of Oklahoma Women (Part Two): Healthy women, healthy families

By: Carly Putnam
November 14, 2013 // Updated: May 2, 2019
This post is the second of a two-part series on the state of women in Oklahoma based on the Center for American Progress’s report “The State of Women in America: A 50-State Analysis of How Women are Faring Across the… Read more [More...]

Oklahoma CountySTATS 2013: New county-level fact sheets

By: Kate Richey
November 12, 2013 // Updated: March 25, 2014
Oklahoma Policy Institute has updated a powerful tool for learning about your county and the quality of life of its residents.  CountySTATS 2013 displays summary data and statistics for each of the state’s 77 counties with a two page fact-sheet… Read more [More...]

Do schools matter?

By: Gene Perry
November 11, 2013 // Updated: May 2, 2019
In a report released last month (and summarized on our blog here), researchers at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University found major flaws in Oklahoma’s A-F grading system for schools. The Fallin administration recently jumped to the defense… Read more [More...]

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