HIGH COST OF POVERTY TAKES TOLL ON STATE

Recent statistics supplied by the U.S. Census Bureau give a startling and alarming meaning to diversity in Missouri. In this case, the connotation of the word diversity means poverty, inadequate nutrition, poor health care and an endless chain of despair and hopelessness.

Some of the figures on poverty are not new, but the degree of their permanence is. It has long been known that widespread poverty exists in the state's inner-core urban areas and in certain parts of outstate Missouri. Stories about these pockets of poverty have appeared for years, even decades, and efforts to overcome them have been in existence for nearly as long. Some of these corrective programs are still in effect, and depending on their degree of support and funding, a few have made a difference in the lives of families.

The problem is that many of the programs are lacking in either support or funding, while others have neither. Some are operating despite either support or funding but their impact on the economic well-being of the recipients is negligible at best.

It is not that high poverty-level areas have not attempted to correct local conditions and create additional opportunities. Whether in the large cities or the rural farming communities, local citizens have responded for decades with self-help and economic development plans that seem reasonable enough at their inception. The problem is not that these projects are poorly devised. The difficulty is that the problems are greater than the solutions offered.

In more affluent areas of the state, particularly during the past decade or longer, the nation's economic inequalities were overcome in large measure by increasing the number of wage earners within a family. When the husband's salary was insufficient to keep up with inflation and loss of real income, the wife secured a lesser-paying job to supplement the losses. This remedy has worked in areas where it was possible for the wife to secure a job. In areas where enough jobs were lacking to give full employment to all the males seeking work, the wives were unable to find second jobs for the family. This enhanced the poverty level, making it harder each passing year for families to keep ahead of the poverty level.

Now the latest statistics indicate one rural county in Southeast Missouri has more than one-third of its families living below the poverty level. In the city of St. Louis, nearly one-fourth of the families are below the annual $12,675 annual income level.

It is startling to realize that Missouri is a state that shows a diversity of poverty-level income that runs from a low of 4.7 percent in St. Charles County to a high of 35.8 percent in Pemiscot County. The counties are barely 200 miles apart in geographical terms, yet millions of miles away in opportunity, affluence and educational levels. Some of this difference can be traced to the absence of these assets among minorities, while still other differentiations occur because of the principal sources of income for the regions. St. Charles County has a high level of employment in top-paying automotive and defense assembly jobs, while in rural areas the principal source of wealth is in agriculture which has a steadily declining employment base. Even if there were an increased number of farm job opportunities, these slots are traditionally low-paying due to the nature of the work and their seasonal nature.

Two remedies have long been employed to overcome the nagging poverty that exists in several areas of Missouri.

One is the addition of new industries, and there is not a city or county in high-poverty areas that is not now engaged in looking for and trying to attract some sort of new industry. This job has become harder and harder in the past couple of decades, as statewide totals well indicate. The number of corporations seeking new plants because of expanded production steadily declined in the 1980s. Even companies that sought new locations began looking beyond the borders of both their home state and the country as a whole, as witness the steady movement of assembly plants to central and South America in the past decade. Even existing companies in poverty areas were oftentimes hard pressed to maintain previous employment levels, as witness the recent closings of Brown Shoe Co. plants.

The second remedy pursued by those seeking to overcome existent poverty has been education. Unfortunately, raising the educational average in a poverty area from 7th grade levels to 11th or 12th grade levels has failed to provide an incentive for added economic development. Many of the growth industries in the United States in the past several years have required either minimum educational achievement (fast food and service industries) or college or technical training (computers and health-care specialties). Caught somewhere in the middle has been the poverty level area that cannot support service industries and cannot compete with the requirements of technically based corporations.

Given the failure of both favored remedies, it remains to be seen whether other courses of action taken by still larger jurisdictions could, if attempted, meet with more success. That depends, once again, on factors beyond the control or influence of smaller jurisdictions such as cities and counties. Does an Appalachia approach meet the needs of the Bootheel or urban areas? Can high density social service agencies administer to the ills of an economically deprived region and overcome the lack of private investment?

We would suggest that this nagging economic, social and cultural drought can only be resolved when a jurisdiction as large as a state gives it high enough priority. Just as Missouri has been content to see a diversity of per-student revenue support balloon to as much as $7,000, so has the state been willing to watch as more and more of its citizens slipped below the national poverty level. Our priorities are strange, indeed, for Missouri willingly spends tax money to build athletic stadiums for non-existent football teams and create luxury hotels, yet consistently ignores the growing number of its citizens who barely subsist on minimal dole. It is obvious the time has come to end this cruel indifference and neglect.