Numbers Show Improvement, but Poverty Still Growing Here
Galesburg Register-Mail
May 5, 2009
Despite slight improvements in graduation and teen pregnancy rates, poverty continues to grow here.That mixed bag was the prognosis for Knox County in The Heartland Alliance’s annual poverty report, released last week.
From Galesburg Register-Mail:
Despite slight improvements in graduation and teen pregnancy rates, poverty continues to grow here.
That mixed bag was the prognosis for Knox County in The Heartland Alliance’s annual poverty report, released last week. The improvements were enough to bump Knox County on to the watch list, after three consecutive years on a warning list, even though the poverty rate increased by 2 percentage points to 17.6 percent over the previous year’s data.
The improvements in the graduation and teen pregnancy rates were slight, but the upward trend is encouraging. That Galesburg District 205 has invested in an alternative school to address graduation rates and the Knox County Health Department has plans to address teen pregnancy lends hope that these areas will continue to improve.
And they still need to improve — dramatically. Knox County’s rates in both areas still are worse than the state average. According to the report, more than a quarter of the people under 18 in Knox County are living in poverty. In Galesburg public schools, more than half of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches. There is a long road ahead to break the cycle of generational poverty here.
We don’t mean to diminish the importance of the improvements in graduation and teen pregnancy rates, but heavy doses of honesty and reality are needed to adequately address the poverty situation. It’s likely poverty actually is worse here — and throughout the state — than this year’s report indicates, since the available data is not current enough to reflect the full impact of the recession.
By Galesburg Mayor Sal Garza’s estimation, the current unemployment rate, which has been above 9 percent locally since February, would push Knox County back on the warning list.
Likewise, The Heartland Alliance estimates that more than 400,000 Illinoisans have fallen into poverty since the recession began in 2007, an increase of 27 percent. The Illinois Department of Human Services is reporting that 672,000 families used food stamps in March, an increase of 14 percent since the end of 2007. Those are tough figures to swallow here, where factory closures already had us reeling.
Despite the numbers, Team Knox County, a task force formed to address poverty and chaired by Garza, found the community was in a state of “denial or resistance” about the situation. That needs to change. Garza, in his role as mayor and chairman, is in a position to keep the discussion going and we hope this remains one of his priorities. There is no simple solution to poverty, but turning a blind eye is not going to help.