POOREST TOWN of USA
Beattyville sits at the northern tip of a belt
of the most
enduring rural poverty in America. The belt runs from
eastern
Kentucky through the Mississippi delta to the Texas
border with Mexico, taking
in two of the other towns – one
overwhelmingly African American and the other
exclusively
Latino – at the bottom of the low income scale. The town at
the
very bottom of that census list is an outlier far to the west
on an Indian
reservation in Arizona.
Beattyville’s median household income is just
$12,361 (about £8,000) a year, placing it as the third lowest income town in
the US, according to that Census Bureau 2008-12 survey.
Nationally, the median household income was
$53,915 in 2012. In real terms, the income of people in Beattyville is lower
than it was in 1980.
The town’s poverty rate is 44% above the
national average. Half of its families live below the poverty line. That
includes three-quarters of those with children, with the attendant
consequences. More than one-third of teenagers drop out of high school or leave
without graduating. Just 5% of residents have college degrees.
Surrounding communities are little better.
Beattyville is the capital of Lee County, named after the commander of the
Confederate army of Northern Virginia in the civil war, General Robert E Lee.
Five of the 10 poorest counties in the US run
in a line through eastern Kentucky and they include Lee County. Life expectancy
in the county is among the worst in the US, which is not unconnected to the
fact that more than half the population is obese. Men lived an average of just
68.3 years in 2013, a little more than eight years short of the national
average. Women lived 76.4 years on average, about five years short of national
life expectancy.
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