County’s poverty rate falls, but still stubbornly high
When it comes to job and population growth, Franklin County has long been a powerhouse. But it still has a higher percentage of poor residents than the rest of Ohio and the nation.
That nagging data point stands out in U.S. Census Bureau reports that generally show local poverty rates declining and incomes rising over the past five years.
“Franklin County continues to lag Ohio and the U.S., despite every income and education indicator that shows we are far more prosperous,” said Michael Wilkos, a senior vice president at the United Way of Central Ohio who studies community demographics.
“We are creating jobs at a faster rate, yet we are not seeing the gains that we should,” he said. “We’re not seeing as much of a reduction in the working poor as we should.”
Franklin County’s poverty rate stood at 15.9 percent in 2017, down from 17.7 percent in 2013, according to the American Community Survey data. The state’s rate was 14 percent, down from 16 percent in 2013.
On the broader income front, Franklin County shows more robust gains. Median annual household incomes increased 9.4 percent from 2013 to 2017, to $59,227. That was a bigger jump than Ohio’s median household-income gain of 6.8 percent.
Franklin County Commissioner Marilyn Brown said it’s important to note the positive trends. But the gap between affluent and struggling families remains frustratingly large.
“We have a lot of people working. The unemployment numbers are low,” Brown said.
At the same time, “we have a lot of working people who aren’t able to make a living — not working enough hours to support a family.”
The census report estimates that nearly a third of Franklin County residents — 31.9 percent — had incomes lower than 200 percent of the poverty threshold for 2017, or less than $49,200 a year for a family of four.
Perhaps most troubling is the number of Franklin County children who live in poverty. The census counted 66,891 last year, “more than the population of Worthington, Groveport, Hilliard and Grandview Heights combined,” Wilkos said. “That is a sobering image.”
In July, the Franklin County commissioners approved a $262,369 contract with a Tennessee company to develop a strategic plan to help bring people out of poverty. A county steering committee met this month to discuss demographic and other poverty-related information.
Brown said representatives of the private sector at the meeting, including Kenny McDonald, Columbus 2020’s president and chief economic officer, recognize that employers need to do more.
“Some employers don’t think long-term, as you hope they would think to do,” she said.
Many observers say income gains since the post-recession recovery began in 2010 haven’t been strong enough to position communities for the next slowdown.
In earlier years, wages would have started moving higher sooner in a bullish economic cycle than they did this time, said Valerie Wilson, director of the race, ethnicity and economy program for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Even with the gains over the past five years, median household incomes in Franklin County and other areas are just now returning to the inflation-adjusted levels they were at a decade ago.
“It started happening much later, not at the rate or pace that would suggest the labor market is tight,” Wilson said. And she said there are no policies or agendas at the federal level geared toward reducing income inequality.
Wilson’s group released a report this month titled “America’s Slow-Motion Wage Crisis,” which said that from 1980 to 2017, earnings of the highest-wage workers grew by 47 percent nationally when adjusted for inflation. Among the lowest-paid workers, the gain was 9 percent.