(The primary source for the above column graph is the West Virginia Secretary of State website. The numbers for 1972 -- Nixon vs. McGovern -- are a curious anomaly. Or maybe not, considering the national result.)
50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back. (The New York Times, 4/20/2014)
McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century. John F. Kennedy campaigned here in 1960 and was so appalled that he promised to send help if elected president. His first executive order created the modern food stamp program, whose first recipients were McDowell County residents. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty” in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind. The federal programs that followed — Medicare, Medicaid, free school lunches and others — lifted tens of thousands above a subsistence standard of living.
But a half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County. The economy is declining along with the coal industry, towns are hollowed out as people flee, and communities are scarred by family dissolution, prescription drug abuse and a high rate of imprisonment.
But then so have a lot of people. (Been leaving McDowell County.)
Its population has declined 78% since its 1950 peak.
Related post:
It's more than 350 miles from Fairfax County Virginia to McDowell County, West Virginia. (3/17/2014)
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