Tennessee poverty rate rises more quickly than U.S. rate

from The Tennessean

Rutherford County rate rises fastest in Nashville area

By CLAY CAREY
Staff Writer

For the last few years, Ray Parson has lived a poor man's life. He has been without a home, staying with family and friends around Murfreesboro a few nights at a time.

Those who work with the poor say more and more people in the Nashville area are ending up like Parson — living below the poverty line. And while he's not a statistician, Parson has figured out that there are more poor people in his community.

"I run up on people (in his situation) all the time," drinking coffee at fast-food restaurants or walking the streets of Murfreesboro, Parson said.

"They just move around, trying to see where jobs are," Parson said.

The latest U.S. Census numbers show Tennessee's poverty rate rising more quickly than the national rate. Economics experts say things have probably gotten worse since these figures were tallied in 2005.

The trend shown by the 2005 figures is not as bad in most Nashville-area counties as it is statewide. But those who deal with poverty every day — researchers, charity operators and the poor themselves — say they've only seen more need.

In Nashville, traditionally the area's most impoverished county, census figures showed the poverty rate actually went down 1 percentage point from 2004 to 2005. The stats put Davidson County's 2005 rate at 14.7 percent; almost 1 point lower than the state poverty rate but about 1.5 points higher than the national rate.

"If you are talking about real basic crisis services" — needs like food, shelter and help with rent and utility payments — "we haven't seen" a decrease, said Dani Lieberman with the United Way in Nashville.

Lieberman oversees the way money is disbursed from the United Way to the nonprofit agencies it helps fund.

"There have been large increases," Lieberman said. "There's no shortage of need."

Tennessee rate went up

In 1997, the first year analyzed by the census study, Tennessee's poverty rate was about the same as the national rate. But from 1997 to 2005, Tennessee's rate increased by two percentage points to 15.6 percent, while the national rate dipped around 2001 then rose back to 13.3 percent.

Poverty rates for the state's children and teens also rose faster than the national rate, increasing 3.2 percentage points from 2000 to 2005 alone, according to census data. The national increase over the same period was 1.8 percentage points.

David Penn, director of the Business and Economic Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, called the trends "troubling," especially the increase among children.

For adults, "it could be the loss of jobs in manufacturing," Penn said. "Apparently, they're not getting as good a job as they did in the past."

But James Foster, economics professor at Vanderbilt University and senior fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Studies there, said the census numbers are too old to draw real conclusions about where poverty in Tennessee stands today.

It could be worse now

The census figures stop at 2005. Since then, he said, bankruptcies and foreclosures have been on the rise, more refugees have moved to the area and a national recession is looming. All those factors can play heavily into poverty rates.

"I don't think anyone has a good handle on what's happening with poverty," Foster said.

Penn and Foster agreed that using the figures to compare rates over a short period of time can be misleading. Large increases or decreases over a single year can indicate major changes, Penn said, or "it could be due to the chance of the sample."

"It's kind of inconclusive," he said.

According to the census figures, Rutherford County's poverty rate is increasing faster than any of Nashville's other neighbors. Figures show the county's 2005 poverty rate at 11.8 percent, almost 2 percentage points higher than the previous year and 4.3 points higher than the 1997 rate.

The census numbers show four straight years of increases starting in 2001. Those numbers don't surprise Jim Hargrove, who helps poor families.

"Over the last several years, we've had a steady increase year by year," said Hargrove, a pastor and director of the West Main Mission in Murfreesboro. It provides food, clothes and financial assistance to needy families in Rutherford and Cannon counties.

Hargrove estimated a 5 percent increase in demand for those services in each of the last two years. He thinks the area's prosperity is drawing people who need jobs.

"Everybody hears there's work in these counties, so a lot of people migrate," Hargrove said.

Many of them are already poor, expecting to change their fortunes.

"People come in looking for jobs, and by the time they get here they've exhausted most of their resources."

Others, like Ray Parson, have been around all their lives.

Parson, 58, said he worked at a car wash, making enough to get by until he quit about 10 years ago because of back problems.

Since then, he's done landscaping and other odd jobs part time.

"I can work. I just can't work as hard and steady like I did," he said.

Parson got a boxed lunch and some clothes at the West Main Mission Friday afternoon. He said he hopes his fortunes will change in a few years, when he's old enough to draw Social Security.