I recently came across an article written by Mother Jones' Washington Bureau Reporter Erika Eichelberger and found it interesting.   While this article may not totally represent this rural region, given our current State budget situation and some of the impacts the impasse is having on those less fortunate, I thought I would share it.  The article is entitled 10 Poverty Myths, Busted and reads as follows:  

•  Single moms are the problem. Only nine percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.*
•  Black dads are the problem. Among men who don't live with their children, black fathers are more likely than white or Hispanic dads to have a daily presence in their kids' lives.
• Poor people are lazy. In 2004, there was at least one adult with a job in 60 percent of families on food stamps that had both kids and a nondisabled, working-age adult.  If you're not officially poor, you're doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America's cities and regions.
•  Go to college, get out of poverty. In 2012, about 1.1 million people who made less than $25,000 a year, worked full time, and were heads of household, had a bachelor's degree.**
•  We're winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.
•  The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.
•  The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.
•  Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

*Source: Analysis by Dr. Laura Tach at Cornell University
**Source: Census

Per the Heartland Alliance's Report on Illinois Poverty and the individual county breakdown for 2013, the average poverty rate in the four county region served by this agency was 15.3%.  This average included the range of 12.2% and 21.1% for Hancock and McDonough counties respectively.  With our current budget impasse, the situation can only get worse for the working poor, the elderly and children living in poverty.  Additionally, there are those in the middle class who have been laid off due to the economic ripple effects and others who may be only one paycheck away from becoming poverty strickened themselves.  

Isn't it time to move forward?