[Illinois] poverty rate worst in Midwest

from The Quincy Herald Whig

By Deborah Gertz Husar

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

Four adults and seven children are living in a small rental home, struggling every month to make ends meet. Now, one daughter is pregnant at 17 and plans to bring her child into the home, adding to the financial burden.

It's a familiar story for Jennifer Harvey, supervisor of infant/toddler programs at Transitions. She sees the face of poverty in Adams County on a daily basis.

"People don't realize poverty is in their own backyard," she said.

The 2006 Report on Illinois Poverty released last week by the Illinois Poverty Summit looks at key indicators of well-being in the state. The report put Adams County on its Poverty Watch List for the second year in a row. The report finds that Illinois' poverty rate is the worst in the Midwest.

Thirty-nine counties statewide made the report's watch or warning lists, earning a spot based on assessing rates of high school graduation, unemployment, teen births and poverty.

Counties are evaluated on a point system, with up to eight points given to a county if its rate is higher than the state average and/or if they have worsened in the previous year. Counties that score four or five points are placed on the watch list; counties that score six to eight points are placed on the warning list.

Adams County stayed on the list because its graduation rate dropped slightly and remains below the state average, and its teen birth and unemployment rates rose. The county's 12.7 percent teen birth rate is 3 percent above the state average, according to the report.

The report also shows that Adams County has 7,248 residents living in poverty, or 14.9 percent. That is just under the state average of 15.6 percent.

The report finds that Illinois' poverty rate is the worst in the Midwest. The state also lags behind the rest of the region on 15 key poverty indicators including employment outlook, housing affordability and education spending.

The state has the most expensive rent for a two-bedroom apartment and the lowest homeownership rate in the Midwest, along with the largest per pupil spending gap between low-poverty and high-poverty districts.

The findings are no surprise to Harvey.

"There's a need out there for more housing for people that are living in poverty, more help with jobs that can support single mothers," she said.

Harvey works with the pregnant teen through the agency's First Steps program, and said too many of those teens live in crowded and inadequate conditions.

"Maybe education isn't stressed as important in the family," Harvey said. "She might be struggling with the family, the pregnancy, going to school, finances. It's a multitude of factors coming together.

"The success stories may not be what a middle income family would find. Small successes for them, from our opinion, are just going back to school."

Officials say working toward longer-term solutions takes an understanding of the pathways out of poverty so a family can break a cycle that may have affected generations.

"Each of us can almost look back at our own families and what made the difference, usually attainment of an asset. For my dad, it was being the first person in the family to go to college," said Amy Rynell, director of the Mid-America Institute on Poverty of Heartland Alliance, which coordinated the report.

But many Illinois households owe more than they own — 12.4 percent of Illinoisans experience income poverty, while 20.7 percent experience asset poverty — giving them little protection against hardship.

Most admit that earning a degree provides an immense asset in earning potential, and having a home provides leverage to other things. Even something as simple as better access to banking boosts the likelihood of saving and the ability to weather a future crisis or invest in something like a home.

"A lot of things can happen to really help families at the state and federal level," Rynell said.

Illinois has made strides, like investing $90 million since 2003 in the Early Childhood Block Grant helping 25,000 additional at-risk youngsters to attend preschool, and passing the Rental Housing Support Program Act to make rent affordable to an estimated 5,500 families at or below 30 percent of the area median income.

However, the state continues to struggle with the economy and attracting jobs. Since 1999, Illinois has experienced the second sharpest decline in household median income in the nation, with income falling at a rate three times that of the national average, the report said.

At the same time, the state's shift to a service economy is becoming more evident. By 2012, four of the top 10 growing occupations in the state will pay less than $19,350 a year, the 2005 federal poverty level for a family of four.

"One concern is human services infrastructure being undermined due to funding cuts and costs of doing business increases," Rynell said. "The system people in need most rely on is struggling itself."

Rep. Art Tenhouse, R-Liberty, is a member of the Illinois Poverty Summit steering committee. He said state agencies are hard-pressed to serve all the clients they need to serve.

"You can't just throw more money at it. You have to deal with educating folks, but human services should be emphasized more," Tenhouse said. "We have to be able to provide good jobs, and I don't feel like we're doing all we can as far as state government to help people in Illinois. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like any state has a magic formula at this time."

Amanda Marlow, AOK network coordinator at the Adams County Health Department, said gaining a better understanding of what people in poverty go through and the decisions they have to make every day might help break the cycle of poverty.

"The average salary of a family living at the poverty level, by the time you take out basic medical expenses, child care, even with subsidies, there's nothing left for cleaning supplies, personal care products, birthday presents, extras," she said.

"It puts parents in a tough place. Living week by week, paycheck by paycheck, I think people would be surprised the number of people doing that in our community."

Tenhouse agrees.

"Some legislators are kind of like the public," he said. "They close their eyes and think it will go away. It won't go away."