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Akron
Beacon Journal...
Ohio’s
new poor
September 25, 2011
Across
Ohio, the effects of the recent
recession are emerging, harsh and widespread, in the census data for
2010. The
number of Ohioans living in poverty has nudged up to 15.8 percent. More
than one-third
of the residents of Cleveland and Dayton, and close to 30 percent of
Akron’s
population, have fallen below the poverty line.
What
is striking about these numbers,
social service agencies note, is that many of them are newly poor,
middle-class
households knocked off their feet by the sudden convergence of
unfortunate
economic circumstances: A large number of jobs have disappeared in a
relatively
short period of time, with the result that more workers are facing
longer
periods of joblessness. The state unemployment rate hovers stubbornly
around 9
percent. Further, declining wages have depressed household incomes,
middle- and
low-income workers hit the hardest. The median household income in Ohio
dropped
more than $3,000 during the recession, from $49,000 in 2007 to $45,090
last
year.
Equally
significant, government
subsidies and many services are facing sharp reductions just at the
time they
are needed the most to soften the severity of the economic fallout.
Efforts in
Congress to extend unemployment benefits, for instance, have been
marked by
bitter policy fights, the need to ease the hardships on families pit
against
concerns about the federal deficit.
Food
distribution at the Akron Canton
Regional Foodbank has risen 48 percent in the past three years as
poverty and
the demand for emergency food have gone up in the region. Yet, the Ohio
Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks reports, grants to Ohio from
the
federal Emergency Food and Shelter Program for this year were reduced
by 47
percent.
The
growth in the poverty rate poses a
particular challenge. Ohio needs more, not fewer, of its residents at
work to
drive a long-lasting recovery, but that is not likely to happen quickly
when
large numbers of households are stuck in poverty, with little or no
financial
resources to maintain themselves or improve their skills.
Read
it at the Akron Beacon Journal
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