At the Greenville Chamber's annual meeting in January, Ed Sellers, Chairman of New Carolina (SC's Council on Competitiveness) made an outrageous statement. Ed said that Greenville, Richland, and Charleston counties each had more people in poverty than the eight rural counties in the lower part of the Lowcountry combined. No one that knows Ed really doubts that he has the data to back an outrageous statement like that up. (Ed has more data at his fingertips that the next ten people in this state combined).
Ed's point is not that we ignore poverty in rural counties, but that we also have to solve poverty in the metropolitan areas of the state, which is where the most people in poverty live. Poverty is not just a problem over there somewhere.
Don't believe Ed? Here's the outrageous truth in the latest data from the US census bureau.
Greenville Charleston Richland Total Hampton Jasper Colleton Allendale Barnwell Clarendon Calhoun Bamberg Total | Population 401,174 326,762 334,609 21,301 21,193 39,595 11,061 23,404 33,157 15,287 15,952 | % in poverty 10.50% 16.40% 13.70% 20.70% 21.80% 21.10% 34.50% 20.90% 23.10% 16.20% 27.80% | # in poverty 42,123 53,589 45,841 141,554 4,644 4,387 8,355 3,816 4,891 7,659 2,476 4,435 40,663 |
1 comment:
Perhaps the Department of Commerce should be reading these statistics when they try to locate business to the rural areas rather than the urban areas. Or when they give stronger incentives to the less developed counties than the developed counties.
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