Some still fighting War on Poverty after 40 years

May 23, 2004 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ECKMAN, W.Va. — Staring blankly from behind a curtain of bangs, Amanda Mullins has an outlook that's as black as the coal heaped in the railroad gondolas rumbling down the tracks behind her.

Childhood dreams of becoming a pediatrician died with the birth of a son and an education cut short after the 10th grade. At 18, unwed and on welfare, Mullins has set her sights on earning her high school equivalency diploma so she and her baby can follow that coal out of McDowell County.

“He's just going to follow right in my footsteps if he stays here,” Mullins says over the squeal of the passing train. ‘Ain’t no future here ‘cause ain’t no jobs here.”

Forty years after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “War on Poverty” McDowell County seems more like an orphan — some would say victim — of that struggle.

Whether measured in miles of road paved or high school diplomas earned, there is no question that Appalachia has come a long way since it was famously called “The Other America.”

The regional poverty rate has been slashed from 31 percent in 1960 to 13.6 percent in 2000, just over a point higher than the national average. And the percentage of adults in the region with a high school education or better has increased by more than 70 percent.

Nearly 2,300 miles of roads through Appalachia have been completed at a cost of $6.2 billion, and federal grants have given more than 800,000 families access to clean water and sanitation facilities. But while many parts of this 13-state region that stretches from New York to Mississippi have reached parity with the nation as a whole, rural central Appalachia remains very much a region apart.

As metropolitan areas spread to include much of official Appalachia, and resources are directed at regional growth centers, the areas of entrenched poverty face an “outlook that is fairly grim,” says Ohio University sociologist Ann Tickamyer.

“I think what we will see in the near future is more of the same — sort of nibbling away at the edges,” says Tickamyer, co-author of a soon-to-be-released study of the region’s depressed areas. “And the persistence of severe poverty the most severe poverty in the most remote areas.”

McDowell County is one such area. At one time, the county's population swelled to more than 100,000, a fifth of those employed digging the coal that forged the steel and generated the electricity that propelled the United States to economic dominance. Last year, more than 4 million tons of coal rolled out of this southernmost West Virginia county but it took barely 700 people to produce it.

The county ranks last in West Virginia in economic sustainability and general health; first for its rate of diabetes, low birth weights, births to unwed mothers, suicide, homicide and sudden infant death. The life expectancy of 64.5 years for men is about 13 years less than the national average.

During coal’s heyday the mining companies supplied most people’s needs, from jobs to housing to sewage to medical care. With the War on Poverty, the government replaced that “coal-camp mentality” with another kind of dependency says Jo-Claire Datson, a program director with the Council of the Southern Mountains and president of the county's rural health advisory board.

“You're dealing with a population in which those who were raised with work ethics and who really want to work have left, for the most part,” says Datson, who left an analyst position with Dun & Bradstreet seven years ago to give back to her native community Those remaining here, she says, may not be against working, “but they don't know how.”

ARC sets goal of creating 200,000 jobs in 10 years

December 05, 2004 By HANK HAYES

The number "2" figures prominently in all four main performance goals in the Appalachian Regional Commission's recently released long-term strategic plan. Over the next decade, the ARC wants to create 200,000 jobs, come up with improved sewer and water infrastructure for 200,000 households, give 200,000 people more education and job skills, and open up 250 more miles of the Appalachian Development Highway System.

The strategic plan is the result of a planning effort launched late last year by the ARC with a series of meetings and field forums in its 13-state service area, including one held in Kingsport hosted by ARC Federal Co-Chair and Kingsport native Anne Pope. About 1,000 people participated in the field forums, according to the ARC. The ARC began its mission in 1965 to beat down poverty in more than 200 of the region's economically distressed counties.

"In fiscal year 2004, over 90 counties were still classified as severely distressed," the plan says. "Increased global competition and technological change have resulted in job losses and restructuring in many key Appalachian industries. Because of its rugged terrain and high proportion of rural residents, Appalachia is at risk of falling behind in the implementation and use of modern technology and telecommunications, a necessary component of competitiveness in today's economy."

The ARC defines distressed counties as those areas having a three-year average unemployment rate that is at least 1.5 times the national average; a per capita market income that is two-thirds or less the U.S. average of $25,676; and a poverty rate that is at least 1.5 times the U.S. average of 12.4 percent. In Northeast Tennessee, Johnson and Hancock counties are considered distressed, as are Buchanan and Dickenson counties in Southwest Virginia.

The ARC's future methods to lift up distressed counties sound much like the old ones. According to the plan, the ARC will continue to work with local development districts to leverage public and private dollars in regional economic development and to strengthen basic infrastructure.

Getting year-to-year federal funding has been a challenge for the ARC since its inception, but that apparently won't be the case next year. The ARC's level $54.7 million budget for area development next year expects to support job creation in five major areas: Providing clean water to Appalachian communities; expanding access to high-speed broadband; moving toward parity with the nation in educational attainment; reducing the disparity between Appalachia and the rest of the country in the rates of certain chronic diseases; and capitalizing on Appalachia's cultural heritage and natural beauty.

The ARC's $66 million 2005 budget for community and economic development programs also represents level funding for the agency. The ARC also anticipates receiving another $450 million for the Appalachian Development Highway System through the U.S. Transportation Equity Act.

The ARC points out inconsistent or inadequate funding would impact its ability to implement its long-term strategic plan. Other external challenges to the plan could include a downturn in the nation's economy and unanticipated demographic shifts in the region, such as an increase in population aging and high levels of new settlers with low education and language skills, according to the ARC.

"The region continues to battle economic distress, concentrated areas of high poverty, high unemployment rates, educational disparities, high rates of disease and population migration," the ARC strategic plan says. The ARC is a partnership of 13 states and the federal government working with 72 local development districts.

For more about the ARC and to view a complete copy of the strategic plan go to http://www.arc.gov/

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