Study Shows Poverty Rising in Central Illinois
Peoria Journal Star
May 7, 2010
There’s a slew of anecdotes to go with the troubling, if not surprising, trends in poverty throughout the state, based on Heartland Alliance’s recently released report on poverty in Illinois.
From Peoria Journal Star:
In Lacon, the number of homes in foreclosure have started to level off, from 14 last year down to two currently. But unemployment still is high, and the food pantry still is busy.
That many foreclosures is pretty big in a town with about 800 households, says city utility clerk Connie Anderle, who began paying attention when she noticed more past due accounts on water and sewer bills.
“That’s how you know they’re getting ready to walk away from their homes,” Anderle said.
The Rev. Kay Harding, coordinator of the Lacon food pantry, can’t speak to foreclosures, but she knows the 35 percent increase in attendance at the local food pantry is because of unemployment and worse, underemployment.
“We’re seeing a lot of people whose hours have been cut,” she says. “Some of them would’ve been better off getting laid off. They’re making less than they would be on unemployment, but they can’t quit because they wouldn’t be able to get unemployment.”
There’s a slew of anecdotes to go with the troubling, if not surprising, trends in poverty throughout the state, based on Heartland Alliance’s recently released report on poverty in Illinois.
Marshall County, where Lacon is the county seat, along with Stark and Woodford counties made the group’s 2010 watch list of counties at risk for increasing poverty. Tazewell County entered on the warning list, while Peoria and Knox counties slid from the watch list to the warning list of counties headed for worsening poverty rates from 2009 to 2010. Mason and Fulton counties remained on the warning list for the second year in a row.
In total, 71 of Illinois’ 102 counties made either the watch or warning lists.
Almost all of the counties shared at least three key factors – rising unemployment and poverty rates, a gauge of current poverty, as well as increasing teen birth rates, an indicator of increasing poverty rates in the future. Researchers also used high school graduation rates to predict future poverty rates.
Though a county’s placement on the watch or warning list hinged on unemployment, poverty, high school graduation and teen pregnancy rates, researchers also compiled a wide range of other indicators, including median household incomes, foreclosures, bankruptcies, credit scores and the number of families receiving food stamps.
Marshall County, for instance, showed a 34 percent jump in the number of families receiving food stamps from 2007 to 2009, the highest in the area.
Four new counties on the list, compared to last year, and two counties dropping a notch, shows “things are getting worse in that area,” says Amy Rynell of the Heartland Alliance, a Chicago-based research and advocacy group.
The analysis found the state’s poorest were hit first and hardest by the recession, she says.