[Illinois] Study finds state leads region in poverty, lags on job growth

from The Chicago Tribune

Human rights group says Illinois is ebbing as economic engine

By Mary Ann Fergus
Tribune staff reporter

Even though it boasts the fifth-largest economy in the nation, Illinois has the highest poverty rate in the Midwest and ranks worst in the region on 15 social and economic factors, including housing affordability and education spending, according to a report released Thursday.

Prepared by the bipartisan Heartland Alliance, the 2006 Report on Illinois Poverty highlights a series of dismal U.S. Census statistics that reflect the lives of more than 1.5 million state residents, or 12.4 percent of the population, living in poverty.

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina did not have a long-lasting effect on the public's awareness of poverty or on actions to counter it, said Sid Mohn, president of Heartland Alliance.

"It feels like the visual experiences of Katrina combined quite quickly in the public's eye the natural disaster of Katrina and the social disaster of persistent poverty," Mohn said. "Regrettably, the connection between those two phenomena has been short-lived, and once again persistent poverty has been kind of a blip on our radar screen."

Heartland Alliance, a human rights organization, has overseen the report and presented the findings to lawmakers for six years, but Mohn said elected officials have been slow to initiate solutions.

Illinois lags behind the rest of the region and had the fourth-worst job growth in the nation between 2001 and 2004, according to the Economic Policy Institute."We have historically understood Illinois to be the economic driver in the Midwest region and, in fact, that reputation seems to be slipping," Mohn said.

The state ranked second in the Midwest in median household income in 2003 but dropped to third--at $45,787--in 2004, he said.

Meanwhile, many families in the state live on less than half that, the report said.

A family of four with an income of $19,350 or less qualifies as living at the 2005 federal poverty level.

Nearly 725,000 state residents live in "deep poverty," at or below 50 percent of the federal poverty threshold. That means, for example, a family of four is living on less than $9,675 a year.

The decline in high-paying manufacturing jobs is one reason the state ranks first in the Midwest in the deep poverty category, said Amy Rynell, director of the alliance.