Jason Jordan

Despite the high rates of poverty in Texas, levels of homelessness are relatively low when compared to other states in the US. In 2025, an estimated 8.8 Texans were homeless for every 10,000 residents. For the unsheltered homeless (e.g. those sleeping in vehicles, or on the street), Texas falls closer to the national median for states with a rate of 3.8 unsheltered homeless for every 10,000 residents.

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When thinking about why homelessness rates might vary across sates, we might assume it is most strongly related to the levels of poverty in the state. The first graph below challenges this assumption, revealing effectively no relationship between poverty rates and rates of homelessness across states. In fact, many of the states with the highest rates of poverty have some of the lowest levels of homelessness. The second graph compares levels of homelessness to median income levels. This graph reveals that there is no simple linear relationship between median income and homelessness; however, it also shows that states with above average rates of homelessness are overwhelmingly found in higher income states.

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In contrast to the image of Texas as a large and fast growing economy, the poverty rate of the state is very high, ranked 11th highest in the country in 2024. As can be seen in the map below, Texas sits among the cluster of Southern states with higher than average poverty rates. The final graph examines the relationship between the median income of states and their rates of poverty. Not surprisingly, the relationship is quite strong; however, the graph also shows that the Texas (along with New York and California) poverty rate is somewhat higher than would be expected given its median household income.

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From its very beginnings, the history of Texas was a story of immigration. The first white Americans migrated to the area as part of a plan of the Mexican government to settle the sparsely populated areas north of the Sierra Madres. The graphs below depict estimates of the immigrant population in Texas and the United States since 1850. The foreign born population of Texas was below that of the country as a whole for most of this period, until a steady expansion of the immigrant population began in the 1970s. In 2025, an estimated 20.2% of those living in Texas were born outside of the United States. This large foreign born population is one of the many factors that contributes to Texas’ high level of ethnic and racial diversity.

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Texas is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the country. Representing this diversity in numbers is inherently problematic as the boxes people are placed in to count them never adequately reflect the real complexity and diversity of our individual lived identities. Despite that shortcoming, some numbers can help to paint a broad strokes picture of the ethnic and racial makeup of Texans and how that compares to the rest of the country. Below are two pie charts that provide an overview.

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Social scientists commonly represent and compare diversity across different countries or states through the use of an Ethnic Fractionalization Index, which is formally the inverse Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. This number represents the probability that two people drawn randomly from a state are from the same ethnic or racial group with higher numbers reflecting greater diversity. At the extremes, if everyone has the same ethnic and racial identity the index is zero (i.e. it is not possible to find two people who are different). Alternatively, if every person has their own unique identity, the number is one (i.e. the two people you pick are always different). The graph below shows this diversity index across the US states. If you’d like to learn more about the HHI and other measures of diversity you can read about them here.

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Texas politics and political culture favor a “tough on crime” approach, resulting in the state having one of the highest rates of incarceration in the country. The graphs below show that Texas became a true outlier in the 1990s, where in response to the crime wave of the 1980s and 90s imprisonment rates increased dramatically, well above the typical (median) state.

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In the past 40 years, crime rates fell significantly in both Texas and the country as a whole. The graphs below document the incredible spike in violent crime in the 1980s and 1990s, which had abated by the beginning of the new millennium. Since then, there has been continued decline in both violent and property crime into the current period with crime rates at their lowest recorded levels in the past decade. The graphs also show that Texas rates of both violent and property crime are generally higher than the nation as a whole.

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Rising political polarization is one of the defining features of American politics over the past two decades. The Republican and Democratic parties have become increasingly antagonistic, reducing opportunities for compromise and undermining trust in government, the media, and other social institutions. The graphs below examine the extent to which this polarization in national politics has affected state-level politics in Texas.

From one perspective, legislators themselves frequently report that the partisanship of Texas politics is not as intense as suggested by the national-level discourse. Even amidst intense fights over gerrymandering, abortion rights, and educational curriculum, legislators from both parties frequently point to a long tradition of cooperation. One indication is the high number of bills passed by the legislature with bi-partisan co-sponsors. Additionally, a significant number of bills with exclusively Democratic sponsorship are passed in each year.

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Additionally, there has been a long historical tradition in the Texas legislature of the majority party, electing the minority party (the Democrats since 2002) to chair a number of committees roughly equal to their proportion of seats in the legislature. This long bipartisan tradition was challenged in 2025, when many Republican legislators balked, ending the long practice and preventing Democrats from serving as chair on any committees in the House and only a handful in the Senate.

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Rather than looking to bill sponsorship or committee chairs, Shor & McCarty (2022) measured polarization across US states using a combination of surveys of legislators and their roll call votes. Their findings suggest an overall pattern of intense and rising polarization across many states in the US. The charts below suggest a Texas that stands as one of the most polarized states in the country, driven by the significant distance between the ideological positions of Republican and Democratic legislators (which may not always be reflected in their votes). Additionally, Shor & McCarty’s data suggest that Texas has become significantly more polarized over the past 30 years, growing further from the typical state.

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The Texas Legislature meets for only 140 days every two years. In that brief window, the legislature is incredibly busy passing an extraordinary amount of legislation. The vast majority of that legislation is signed by the Governor, but they frequently use their veto powers to reject bills.

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Texas is currently a very “red” state with Republicans consistently controlling the legislature and winning all statewide offices. This was not always so. The Democrats dominated Texas politics from the end of Reconstruction well into the 1990s with Republicans failing to win a single seat in Texas for almost 100 years. Why the Democrats were so dominant and why that changed are important parts of Texas & American political history. The graphs below document the long domination of Texas politics by the Democrats and show the slow and then sudden rise of the Republican party in the state.

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