The U.S. Census Bureau’s latest numbers are pretty discouraging—here’s some of them.
Apache County is by far the poorest in Arizona, with a whopping 34.5 percent poverty rate. That’s third in the entire West region. Nearby Crowley County, Colo. takes second place with 34.7 percent. The most poverty-stricken Western county is Malheur County, Oreg. with 39.5 percent of people in poverty.
These numbers are across all ages, the Census says.
The most poverty stricken county in the entire country was Ziebach County, S.D., with 50.1 percent.
Download and read the full data set at the U.S. Census website .
Check out how poverty is measured by the Census here, if you’re interested. Just for an example, a family of four with two parents and two children are below the poverty threshold if they all together make LESS than $22,113 a year. That’s income before taxes.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2011.
Good job, Kellie Mejdrich.
Perhaps Becky Pallack over at ADS will storyfy this…
Yes Apache County has a very high poverty rate. They are also the most medically underserved county in Arizona. Apache County has 48 physicians per 100,000 people while Pima County has 276 physicians per 100,000 people. This means that there are 5.75 times more doctors in Tucson than in the average Apache County town. Less doctors generally translates to higher health care costs and less access to care. I am sure that one of the main reasons for the lack of doctors in this region is due to low reimbursement rates for physicians in Apache Country. Also it is difficult to recruit physicians to regions of the country that do not have a good education system in place for their children. I hope regions of the country like this will have more resources in the future because unfortunately their health depends on it!
Source:The Arizona Physician Workforce Study of 2005 by William G. Johnson PhD