JLF Wilmington Blog

Poverty Rate, Observations

Worth noting over at Port City Daily is the story about poverty by Ben Brown.  Meticulously looking through the data, he discovered some poverty data for this region that isn’t exactly stellar news:

Results from the American Community Survey, a Census Bureau product of various area-by-area statistics, show 16.8 percent of New Hanover County—more than 33,000 residents—fell under the poverty level.

So, one would think such news would be bad enough, but advocates for MORE government never will see even high numbers as bad enough.

Poverty is growing and, unfortunately, those who probably never saw themselves facing economic struggles are now facing it,” said Yolanda Burwell, a senior fellow at the Rural Center. The private nonprofit serves 85 counties in the state, including Brunswick and Pender.

“Family poverty and family homelessness is rising all over the nation, and we’re seeing it here,” Dr. Rajni Shankar-Brown, an assistant professor with the Watson College of Education at UNCW, said.

Two notes. . on the one hand, in the presidential arena, the current administration is trying to say things are getting better even as advocates, that lean toward the admins positions, are saying just the opposite.

AND. . . why would the Wilmington City Council and Chamber not connect the dots that the economy is still bad with a potential gilded age stadium proposal that will raise taxes?

Leave a Reply

........As you post your comment, please conform to Squall Line's simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. If you wouldn't say it to a co-worker in front of your boss, it probably is not civil and respectful. We will delete any comment that fails this test and issue a warning to the poster. A second offense will result in a ban on commenting on this site. In sum, disagreements, arguments even, are welcome; abusive behavior is not. Thanks.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

June 2013
M T W T F S S
« Feb    
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

RSS Feeds

Archives

JLF Network Websites & Blogs