Charleston Exponent Telegram – Since our state’s birth in the midst of the Civil War, residents of West Virginia have known poverty to a greater degree than most every state in the Union — with Mississippi lagging just behind us. Considering that 18 percent of Mountain State residents currently live in poverty, it’s hard to point to just one cause for our ongoing economic troubles. Read
On today’s front page is the first of a three-part series by Exponent Telegram Staff Writer Erin Beck that examines the many facets of poverty and what needs to be done to reduce the poverty rate in West Virginia.
An estimated total of 320,055 West Virginians were living in poverty in 2012, according to that year’s American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. The state’s overall labor force, or the number of individuals either working or actively looking for work, was approximately 796,000 during 2013. The number of residents in the state with a job during 2013 was 745,000, which left 51,000 workers unable to find employment.
