Poverty remains stubborn problem in Valley area
Census figures for our region released last week just corroborate what anecdotal evidence, and the personal experiences of too many of our fellow citizens, have told us already: The recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 is a statistical abstraction for many, and nonexistent or worse for many more.
As reported by Alva James-Johnson over the past weekend, statistics in the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey tracked comparative economic data in the periods 2005-2009 and 2010-2014.
Officially, as we've all been told, the recession ended a good while back. Stock market reports and other familiar economic indicators all say so. Economic realities in the lives of real people, including thousands of them right here, often tell a very different story.
For some, of course, the recovery has been quite real. The financial sectors and other professional realms of the economy have rebounded very well. But even that's a positive indicator with a very large warning sign attached: Most of the people for whom the recovery has been more than an abstract statistic have the advantage of college educations. If poverty levels are stagnant -- or, in some cases, getting worse -- people's hopes of climbing out of those ruts are dimmed and the obstacles bigger and more numerous.
"I think the recovery has been fairly flat," Benjamin Blair, director of the Butler Center for Business and Economic Research at Columbus State University, told the Ledger-Enquirer. "There has not been much of a change at the lower end as far as poverty goes."
(Telling somebody mired in abject poverty that his or her best hope is to get a job in the financial services industry is probably not a realistic solution.)
The best numbers in our area came from Chattahoochee County, where the poverty rate was cut almost in half between 2009 and 2014, from 16 to 9 percent. The demographic changes that accompanied that trend are anything but coincidence: Chattahoochee also saw fewer female-householder families with no husband present than five years earlier.
At the other end was Lee County, Ala., whose poverty rate rose over the same period from 20 to 24 percent.
Between them were Harris, Muscogee and Russell counties, all of which showed little or no change. Muscogee County's 2009 poverty rate of 19 percent rose to 20 percent in 2014; Harris County's dropped from 10 percent to 9; and Russell's stayed the same at 22 percent.
The most ominous of all the statistics (likely as bad or worse in Lee and Russell) is this one: More than 48,000 Muscogee County children were living in poverty in 2014 -- about 30 percent of the 18-and-under population.
Recent reports of an improving employment picture offer glimmers of hope, but "recovery" still needs to be a more tangible commodity around here. Economic indicators don't put a roof over the head or food on the table.
This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 4:04 PM with the headline "Poverty remains stubborn problem in Valley area."