Oregon Still Struggles with Rural Poverty

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Jake Thomas, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Eastern Oregon hit hard by rural poverty. Photo Credit: Base Camp Baker via Compfight cc

Despite good news about the state's economic rebound, Oregon still struggles with rural poverty. Overall, the poverty rate in Oregon was at 17 percent, according to the 2012 U.S. Census, the most recent federal data available.

That number grew from the 14.3 percent living in poverty in 2009.

In some counties the poverty level has increased over a 10-year span. Poverty in Lane County, grew from 12 percent in 2000 to 22 perdcent in 2012, census data showed.

Malheur County, a remote part of the state that shares a border with Nevada and Idaho, had the highest poverty rate in the state in 2012, reaching 25.8 percent of the population. Only two years earlier the poverty was as high as 40 percent.

Many predominantly rural counties had high poverty rates. Already among the highest in the state in 2000, Coos, Douglas, Jefferson, and Wheeler counties had poverty rates that soared to 20 percent or more in 2012, according to census data.

But the problem isn't just confined to rural Oregon. Statewide, the poverty rate in Oregon was near 11 percent in 2000 and rose to 17 percent in 2012. Multnomah County, had a poverty rate of 18 percent in 2012. The lowest in the state in 2012 was held by Clackamas County, with a little more than 9 percent.

Overall, in 2013, more than 650,000 people--more than the population of Portland--lived in poverty.

“The story on the new economy is a story of greater gaps between the rich and the poor and a real deepening of poverty,” says Angela Martin, the executive director of Economic Fairness Oregon.

Photo Credit: Slideshow Bruce via Compfight cc

“You can work full time and still not earn enough to get out of poverty, so playing by the rules isn't the solution,” Martin said. “It's a failure of the economy to lift families up and keep a roof over their head.”

For children under the age of 18, things get worse. Nearly one in four children in Oregon, or 23 percent, live in poverty. Wheeler County fared the worst, with nearly 40 percent of children living in poverty, according to data from the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

Malheur County came in second with 35 percent, followed by Jefferson with 34 percent.

According to census data, two school districts in Oregon had a majority of their students living in poverty. Fifty-five percent of the students served by Ashwood School District 8, based in Madras, live in poverty. Port Orford Langlois School District 2J, which serves a coastal community in Curry County, also had a high rate of 54.8 percent of its students living in poverty.

Some Good News

The state has made significant progress in expanding health insurance to children, according to a 2014 report from Children First for Oregon, an advocacy organization focused on child poverty.

Since 2009, Oregon has had the country's second highest reduction in uninsured children, cutting the rate of uninsured children from 12 percent to 6 percent. As of 2012, nearly 94 percent of Oregon children had health coverage.

“Although we have made great progress in reducing child uninsurance, Oregon still ranks high in the nation for children’s insurance rates and 54,000 kids still lack coverage,” the report states.

The report also notes that in 2012, the median family income in Oregon remained more than $1,000 lower than it was in 2008.

“There aren't enough jobs [in the state's remote areas],” said Chuck Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. “Portland and the [Willamette Valley] is the economic engine, and it's hard to get enough jobs into the rural parts.”

Sheketoff said the data centers, windmills and call centers that have arrived in rural parts of the state in recent years aren't going to solve the problem. The projects create construction jobs, but require very few employees to keep them up and running, he noted.

“We know that children and families were impacted by the recession, but we know that many of our rural communities have been slow to recover, which has left many parents underemployed or unemployed,” says Tonia Hunt, executive director of Children First for Oregon.

Hunt said that as the state has moved toward more service-oriented jobs, communities that rely on resource extraction will be worse off.

Even before the recession, many of these communities struggled economically, she said.

Related Slideshow: Top 100 Oregon High Schools

GoLocalPDX has ranked high schools across the state based on a method developed at Babson College, Mass. See below for the top 100 schools in the Beaver State.

Oregon Still Struggles with Rural Poverty

Some Good News

Related Slideshow: Top 100 Oregon High Schools

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