Part of the series: SILENT UNDERCLASS, Poverty in the Heartland
Story by MIKE KILEN, DES MOINES REGISTER STAFF / December 24, 2000
Southern Iowa has been the poor neighborhood across the tracks for decades.
Highest poverty rates in Iowa. Lowest personal incomes. Thousands in population lost.
Little has changed, at least numerically.
Two things stand out to anyone traveling along Iowa Highway 2, the state's poverty road: The area has startling natural beauty, rolling hills and timber in a state known for level fields of corn, and folks in roadside cafes and taverns readily admit that the economy here is dismal.
Iowa's bottom tier of counties is among the worst off in the nation, even after a decade of unprecedented economic growth across the land.
In 1998, Decatur County was in the lowest 10 percent of counties nationwide in per-capita income. The percentages of people living below the federal government's poverty line in Decatur County (19.5%), Appanoose County (17.7%), Ringgold County (16%) and Wayne County (15.6%) are among the top fifth of all counties nationwide.
As much as this is an old story in southern Iowa, it is part of a larger trend in the most remote counties of the agricultural Midwest. There is poverty of a kind usually associated with hard-pressed urban areas or the rural South.
The gap between rural and urban prosperity that worsened with the farm crisis in the 1980s continued into the 1990s, says Jon Bailey of the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Neb. This year, the center issued a report, "Trampled Dreams: The Neglected Economy of the Rural Great Plains."
If you look at the poorest counties in the United States in per-capita incomes, he says, pockets of the rural Midwest "are in worse shape than the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia."
"That's one of the things we are trying to dispel," he says. "Rural poverty is not just a Southern problem. In some cases, we are in much worse shape than the stereotypical pockets of poverty."
Twelve of the 17 counties with the lowest per-capita incomes in the United States are in Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri.
Loup, McPherson and Arthur counties on the edge of Nebraska's Sandhills are the three poorest nationwide. They top the impoverished string of four river delta counties in Mississippi and a few Kentucky counties in the Appalachian foothills.
The Nebraska and South Dakota counties have severely declining populations and little economic activity beyond agriculture. They are great distances from metropolitan areas, and the land has less value than farmland in the rest of the Midwest.
While many rural areas of Iowa are not in bad shape, southern Iowa's problems are beginning to emerge in some other remote, rural counties, says Iowa State University sociologist Willis Goudy. This includes the farm-heavy north-central region, "where the numbers are creeping up."
It is a quiet underclass without the poor image of parts of the American South. Yet the average weekly wage in Decatur County ($339) is similar to that of Mississippi's worst in Issaquena County ($321) or of Kentucky's mountain county of Wolfe ($325). The same characteristics that cause poverty in Nebraska and South Dakota hold true for southern Iowa. The land is poor, in relative Iowa terms.
"The soil is thin, and the ground is hilly," says Jack Van Laar, Extension educator director in Decatur County. "There is no row crop base, and the land values are low." In 1999, an acre of farmland in Decatur County was valued at $752 when the state average was $1,781. An acre was worth $889 in Ringgold County, $819 in Wayne and $803 in Appanoose. In Scott County, by contrast, farmland was valued at $2,970 per acre, according "Iowa's Counties," a reference guide produced by Iowa State University's sociology department.
Towns in these counties are an hour or more from larger cities, too far away to catch the wave of urban expansion and too slow to move from agriculture and its related industries to better-paying industries.
Tim Ostroski, executive director of the Southern Iowa Council of Governments, says: "During the 1970s and 1980s, this part of the state looked for companies that would supplement the farm income. They weren't looking at the major employers. So those companies are still paying those second-income wages."
The population began to age, too. Southern Iowa counties are among the state's oldest in both average age and the percentage of citizens 65 and older. That leaves a shortage of labor, which works against luring higher-wage industries that need skilled workers.
"It is a downward spiral that almost feeds on itself," Ostroski says.
Communities say talk of a labor shortage is exaggerated. If an industry moves in with good jobs, a near riot for applications erupts.
"We've got the workers," says Sandra Phipps, executive director of the Decatur County Development Corp. Her labor survey of 1,377 households last year indicated 750 people were available to work.
In Wayne County, nearly half of the 839 respondents said they were available. Development officials argue that if you include parts of impoverished northern Missouri and other nearby areas, plenty of workers exist.
The problem is an old one, Phipps says. State government shortchanges southern Iowa, writing it off as the poor neighborhood.
It's a common theme in rural pockets in the Midwest. "Rural economies are neglected in economic development policy, which operates from an urban model," Bailey says.
Among the critics is state Rep. Keith Kreiman, D-Bloomfield.
"I always thought the state should target the poorer areas of the state," he says. "We don't target, and we never have. I'm asking for more than our share. We need help in coming up to Iowa standards, frankly.
"I think it's terrible you have an entire tier of counties where the poverty level is unacceptable. The wage level is unacceptable."
Bill Morain, secretary of the Lamoni Development Corp., calls the idea "geographic affirmative action."
"We are Third World compared with the Des Moines area," he says.
The argument is often repeated.
"I hear that wherever I go," says Dawn LeRette, area manager of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, which awards development and business grants through various government programs.
Department officials say they consider community needs in awarding grants. In some cases, local leadership and commitment are needed, LeRette says.
"In order to bring the business in, you have to have housing for the workers," says Larry Luckert of the Wayne County Development Corp.
A housing survey by the University of Iowa showed that Decatur and Wayne counties have vacancy rates above 10 percent, among the state's highest. More than half of the homes, however, were built before 1950.
Many grants require communities to add capital investment, often difficult in cash-strapped cities and counties with weak tax bases.
Others argue that the problem is a lack of vision or follow-through. For example:
* Only one town of 37 in the four poorest counties, Lamoni, had representatives apply by the end of November for grants from Vision Iowa, a $180 million program enacted by the Legislature to help develop community attractions.
* Even though Wayne County hustled to set up an enterprise zone, under a state law aimed at helping impoverished areas develop, a planned industrial park has stalled.
The downward spiral along Iowa Highway 2 continues.
TOMORROW: Effects of poverty.:
