Central Ohio Worst for Poverty among 16 Metro Areas

Study: A ‘wake-up call’ on poverty

Central Ohio is worst among 16 metro areas

Ferenchik, Mark. Columbus Dispatch, Nov. 30, 2011.

The Columbus metropolitan area has the highest poverty rate among 16 areas measured in a new report of community benchmarks.

Central Ohio also has a lower average household income than most of the areas, according to the report written by Community Research Partners with funding from the Columbus Foundation and the Columbus Partnership. Benchmarking Central Ohio 2011 will be released at noon today during a Columbus Metropolitan Club forum.

Not everything is bad. The metropolitan area has a relatively low violent-crime rate (No. 5), a relatively high rate of volunteering (No. 4) and the third-shortest commute time by car, and it was first in the number of nonprofit community celebrations per million people.

The benchmark report looks at population changes, economic strengths and weaknesses, income levels, health and safety, and other measures.

Researchers used American Community Survey census data from 2009 and other sources to compare the eight-county Columbus metropolitan area to 15 others: Cleveland; Cincinnati; Chicago; Kansas City, Mo.; Indianapolis; Milwaukee; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Louisville, Ky.; Nashville, Tenn.; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Raleigh, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; and San Diego.

Some of the metro areas were chosen because they are similar to central Ohio, said Roberta Garber of Community Research Partners. Others are doing things the Columbus area aspires to. Still others are considered economic competitors.

It’s the fourth such report by the group, which last released one in 2009.

Garber said Columbus has traits in common with communities in the South and West such as the Raleigh-Cary and Austin-Round Rock metro areas. Those similarities include a moderately growing population, a relatively low unemployment rate — the third-lowest, as of March 2011, among the 16 metro areas — and a younger group of residents, with a median age of 34.7.

But the Columbus metropolitan area, which comprises Franklin, Delaware, Fairfield, Licking, Madison, Morrow, Pickaway and Union counties, also mirrors older industrial cities with high poverty and obesity rates as well as difficulty establishing small businesses.

“The growth here is masking some of the underlying problems,” Garber said.

Bill LaFayette, owner of the economic-consulting group Regionomics and a member of the project’s advisory group, said: “If you look at the poverty rate over time, we’re consistently at the bottom of the group,” meaning the rate is higher than in the benchmark metro areas.

Kridler said some people in central Ohio have a hard time believing the poverty rate is so high.

“There are cities where there are more-striking individual signs of poverty, more concentration," he said. “Ours tends to be widespread, growing outside the urban core, that there are more working families in poverty.”

Kridler said focusing on increasing the average wage “would be an incredible help to this community.”

Garber said leaders here need to focus on improving adult education and retraining for working-class residents so they can find better, higher-paying jobs.

Among the metropolitan areas studied, Columbus also has the highest percentage of children — 8.5 percent — living in families where neither parent works. That compares to the Raleigh area’s 3.6 percent, the lowest on the list.