Persistent problem

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series looking at child poverty in Jay County. The series will continue with additional stories and editorials over the course of the next few weeks.



“That’s pretty alarming.”

Those were the words of then-Jay County Commissioner Faron Parr a year ago when a report showed the local child poverty rate had shot up eight percentage points in 2014 to 35.2 percent, highest in the state.

Given the new numbers released last week, it seems likely that increase was a statistical anomaly.

That fact, however, doesn’t take Parr’s word — alarming — off the table.

Even with Jay County’s rate dropping back to 24.9 percent in 2015, it still ranks 12th highest among Indiana’s 92 counties.

What does that mean in real numbers?

In this county in 2015, an estimated 1,365 children were living in poverty. That’s more than the entire student body of Jay County High School.



The spike

Each year in late February, Indiana Youth Institute comes out with its data book that includes a variety of the most recent available statistics about the state’s communities, economies, health, education and safety. One of those items is child poverty.

The numbers are based on U.S. Census Bureau information.

Last year’s data book showed Jay County’s 2014 child poverty rate to be 35.2 percent, up from 27.2 percent in 2013.

Some questioned the validity of that number. While the closures of Jay Products (80 employees) in 2013 and Hartzell Air Movement (44 employees) in 2014 certainly could have had an impact, they alone were not enough to explain such a large increase. This year’s IYI data seems to validate that skepticism, as the local child poverty rate was back to 24.9 percent in 2015.

“We’ve gone back and looked at unemployment rates and different things that would perhaps be related to parents being in a situation which puts their children into child poverty and just can’t really find anything that correlates to that,” said IYI vice president of advancement Glenn Augustine. “It could be that that 35 percent was sort of a one-year blip, some kind of anomaly. But certainly with this year closer to 25 percent seems to be in that range of where it’s been for a few years, although that remains above the state average.”



Jay’s history

A look at the numbers over the course of the last two decades shows Jay County has consistently performed poorly compared to the rest of Indiana when it comes to its child poverty rate.

Jay’s rate:

•Has been in the top 20 highest among the state’s 92 counties in 15 of the last 17 years.

•Has outpaced the state’s rate by at least two percentage points every year since 2003.

•Has ranged between 24.5 and 28 percent every year since 2008, with the exception of the 2014 spike.

Jay County’s child poverty rate was locked in the mid-teens around the turn of the century. It matched the state average of 14.7 percent in 1995 and hovered between 13.5 and 16.5 percent over the next eight years.

But then, it shot up. By 2006 it had surpassed the 20 percent mark. And then in 2008 — when the Great Recession hit — it climbed to 24.7 percent. It has been at or above that number ever since.

The last time Jay County did not rank among the top 20 highest child poverty rates in the state was 2007. Since then, it has come in at eighth, 12th, 17th, 11th, 18th, 14th, first and 12th.

None of those are anything to brag about.

Next: What the numbers mean.