The fears of poverty
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em>"The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers."
-- William James (1842-1910)
American philosopher
Our guess is that fear of poverty, as much as individual ambition to succeed, is what keeps most of us happy -- or at least not worrying about where the next rent or mortgage payment will come from. But as a recent U.S. Census Bureau report proves, there are lots of people who live and work around us who worry about that very thing, and more: how to put food on the table and clothes on the back.
The annual American Community Survey provides a peek into our communities, and depending on which part of it you look at, can be encouraging and/or dispiriting.
In general, the Top of Utah is doing well economically, especially when compared to national averages. For example, the U.S. median household annual income is $48,200. In Weber County, the median is $49,342, up less than 1 percent over the previous year.
In Davis County, the median household income is $61,263, up 7.8 percent year-to-year.
That does not mean all of Weber County is sluggish. What's holding back Weber's overall number is Ogden's disproportionately high poverty rate: A full 20 percent of households in Ogden are classified as earning less than the poverty threshold: $20,614 for a family of four, or $10,294 for a single-person household. The U.S. average for the percentage of households living below the poverty line is 13.3 percent, and Utah's state average is 10.6 percent.
Now, before you go assuming that Ogden must be in the grips of a unique situation, look around at other Utah cities. Salt Lake City's poverty rate is the same as Ogden's, at 20 percent. Provo's poverty rate is 30.1 percent. So the poverty rate is important -- officials want to get more of their residents employed, and more of them working jobs with livable wages -- but it doesn't automatically mark a city as failing.
Just as troubling, to our way of thinking, is that 17.4 percent of Utahns don't have health insurance. That's higher than the national average of 15.8 percent. Advocates for children blame reduced funding of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is designed to provide basic health insurance for children in low-income households.
That may be part of the reason, but our guess is that skyrocketing insurance costs and stagnant wages are contributing to more and more Utahns not being able to afford health insurance, or their employers cutting back on those benefits as the expense cuts into profits. Adequate health coverage for working Utahns is just as important as making sure all Utahns have jobs that pay a fair wage.
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