NY Times article: What's The Matter With Eastern Kentucky?

[KSRBEvans]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/06/29/magazine/29economy/29economy-master675-v3.jpg

Lists 6 of the top 10 worst counties in the country to live in being in eastern Kentucky, with Clay County being the worst:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/magazine/whats-the-matter-with-eastern-kentucky.html?rref=upshot&smid=tw-upshotnyt&_r=1

What to do? For as long as I can remember, it's been, as Dwight Yoakam sang, "Readin', Writin' & Route 23," meaning the only thing you could do is leave. Staying was not an option, not if you wanted a better life.

My Dad grew up in Mingo County WV, but it was the same for him. You could get a job in the mines when you graduated from HS (if you were lucky enough to be allowed to graduate from HS instead of getting a job), or you could leave. For him, getting a minimum-wage job at a chicken slaughterhouse in Columbus, OH killing chickens with a scalpel was preferable to getting a job in the mines. He worked his way on from there. The people who stay in the mountains now don't even really have the mines as an option.

I'm not sure there's a bigger combination of natural beauty and human desolation anywhere in the country.

[KeithKSR]

The government is one reason for little to no improvement. People with minimum wage jobs can live fairly well on subsidies. They get HUD assisted housing, which in many cases can pay the entirety of a families rent. Food stamps buy most of their groceries, and in the winter months HEAP assistance pays much of their heating bills. The subsidies really bounce the effective income of those minimum wage owners up to the point that there is no incentive for seeking of higher paying jobs. Plus those earners can get huge EIC refunds at tax time. I did taxes for one family of four with earned income of about $10K and between child tax credits, EIC and refunds of actual taxes paid had a refund of $8K.

I think the disability rates are artificially inflated by the number of able bodied people that leave the area and the number of people who move away to work, then become disabled and return to live in Appalachia where effective cost of living is lower. The number is also inflated by the percentage of manual laborers compared to the percentage of white collar workers. Blue collar workers by percentage are more apt to become disabled through workplace injuries.