POOR KIDS: STUDY POINTS TO RISE IN AREA POVERTY LEVEL

The statistics of poverty can seem intimidating. To Dennis Reagan, they are more than mere numbers.

As director of the Missouri Division of Family Services office in Cape Girardeau, he sees the faces behind the statistics.

"The figures aren't real. They may reflect reality, but they are not real. People are real," he said.

Capt. Elmer Trapp of the local Salvation Army, which deals with people who are in need, cautions against putting too much importance on statistics.

Trapp said that some people who are considered at the poverty level by governmental standards don't consider themselves to be living in poverty.

But Reagan said statistics do indicate the magnitude of poverty.

In Cape Girardeau County, 2,057 children were listed as living in poverty in 1989, according to 1990 U.S. Census figures.

The statistics, reported by the University of Missouri Extension, show that 14.2 percent of the 14,475 children in Cape Girardeau County under the age of 18 were living in poverty.

That compares with 11.1 percent of 14,404 children or 1,599 living in poverty in Cape Girardeau County, as of the 1980 census.

"They (the statistics) don't surprise me too much," said Reagan.

"Over the last three or four years, we have seen an average yearly increase of probably about 13 percent in the number of cases of families applying for food stamps.

"We have had quite a bit of an increase over the last four or five years. At the same time, the number of individuals applying for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) has steadily increased also," he said.

In the last five years, the number of active AFDC cases has doubled and the number of food stamp cases has nearly doubled, said Reagan.

In July 1987, the local office had 502 active AFDC cases. As of this month, the number of cases totaled 1,070. In July 1987, the family services office was handling 1,240 food stamp cases. Today, it is handling 2,270 such cases, Reagan said.

Children as an age group had a higher poverty rate in the 1980s than any other group. The poverty rate for Missouri children was 17.4 percent in 1989, up from 14.6 percent in 1979, census figures show.

The poverty rate for people 65 and older in 1989 was 13.8 percent, down from 16.4 percent in 1979.

The poverty rate for Missouri's total population in 1989 was 13.3 percent. The national poverty level income for a family of four was $12,674 in 1989.

The 1990 census gathered data on 1.3 million Missouri children under the age of 18 who lived in families. The state's poverty rate for children was only slightly under the national rate of 17.9 percent.

In all, 224,532 Missouri children were listed as living in poverty in 1989, up from 195,837 in 1979, census figures show.

Geographically, the rate of poverty was highest (22.5 percent) among children living in Missouri's non-metropolitan areas.

Pemiscot County in the Bootheel had the highest single-county rate of child poverty at 50.2 percent. St. Charles County had the lowest at 5.9 percent.

According to the 1990 census, 3,343 of Pemiscot County's 6,660 children under the age of 18 were living in poverty.

In Bollinger County, 647 youngsters or 23.6 percent of its children were listed as living in poverty. In Perry County, 603 children or 13.1 percent of its youth were listed in that category.

As to other Southeast Missouri counties, 39.8 percent of Dunklin County's children (3,420); 39.4 percent of Mississippi County's youth (1,625); 35.6 percent of New Madrid County's children (2,144); 22.4 percent of Scott County's youth (2,482); and 24.2 percent of Stoddard County's youth (1,724) were living in poverty.

According to census figures, 66 percent of the poor children in Missouri were white. But those children comprised only 14 percent of the state's white population.

In contrast, 41 percent of Missouri's black children lived in poverty in 1989, the University Extension said.

Forty percent of the state's poverty-stricken children were 6 years old or younger.

Not included in the census data were 6,663 children between the ages of 15 and 17 who live alone or with non-relatives. Also, the census was unable to determine the poverty rate for more than 18,000 children younger than 15 years of age who were not living with families, the extension service said.

Census figures show single-parent families had higher rates of poverty than married-couple families.

The 122,058 children living below the poverty level in single-mother families accounted for 54 percent of all children living in poverty in Missouri in 1989.

Gary Stangler, director of the Missouri Department of Social Services, has said that the single most important factor in childhood poverty nationwide is the failure of fathers and, in rare cases, mothers to pay child support.

Reagan said the average family receiving AFDC assistance in Missouri involves a single mother and two children.

But that's only one factor in the poverty picture. A poor parent's lack of education and training is an important factor, he said.

With little education and training, such parents are unable to secure good jobs.

It's difficult for a single parent with a minimum-wage job to provide food, clothing and shelter for his or her family, noted Reagan.

To meet federal guidelines for food stamps, gross income for a family of three cannot exceed $1,207 a month, he pointed out. At such an income level, just paying the rent on an apartment is a chore.

Trapp said one of the underlying problems in poverty is the lack of married-couple families. "You've got to go right back to having some family values," he said.

The problem with poverty statistics, he said, is that they emphasize the negative rather than the positive.

In Cape Girardeau County, for example, if 14.2 percent of children live in poverty that means nearly 86 percent do not, he pointed out.

Trapp said welfare reform is needed to encourage people to become self-sufficient instead of dependent on government programs.

"Sometimes the system causes poverty," he said. "We teach people how to be dependent on programs."