Almost 16 percent of Ohioans lived in poverty last year, according to newly released data from the 2014 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.
That rate is nearly identical to 2013 and puts Ohio below average among states. Ohio ranks 36th in the country for median household income, clocking in at about $49,000 a year. That’s lower than at any time since 1984 and below the national average of about $54,000 a year.
The lack of change in the state’s poverty rate comes even though employment has improved here. The state saw its unemployment rate sink to a 14-year low of 4.7 percent in August. That’s below the national rate of 5.1 percent.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich has touted his policies as the reason for that reduction in unemployment on the campaign trail as he reaches for the GOP nomination for president. He points to the fact that at the time of his inauguration in January 2011, the state’s unemployment rate was 9.2 percent, roughly in line with the nation’s post-recession employment trough.
“It is pretty remarkable what’s happened here,” he said in a March news conference about Ohio’s improving jobs numbers, “not just the economic growth, but the way in which we’ve done it.”
Kasich credits tax shifts which have reduced the state’s income taxes, especially for high-earners and businesses, while increasing sales taxes.
Kasich has enacted some policies that are friendly to the low-income, albeit ones that don’t directly affect the state’s poverty rate. He fought with the state’s conservative legislature to expand Medicaid, a move many other GOP governors refused to allow.
But progressives have decried many of Kasich’s policies, saying they put more burdens on low-income people. Despite job gains, poverty has remained persistent. Some pin the lack of change in poverty rates on lower wages for workers in the state and Kasich’s more regressive tax policies.
Ohio’s average wage is about $16 an hour, lower than it’s been in 28 of the last 36 years when adjusted for inflation, according to left-leaning Policy Matters Ohio.
“Ohioans are working and making education gains, but too many Ohio families struggle to make ends meet, and that’s bad news for all of us,” said Hannah Halbert, a researcher with the Columbus-based think tank.
Advocates like Policy Matters have called for making certain temporary boosts to federal programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax break for low-income workers, permanent. They’ve also called on Ohio lawmakers to accept the full amount of federal aid available for food programs. Kasich has turned down some of that federal money in the past.
Among those in poverty in Ohio last year were nearly 600,000 children, or one-fourth of the state’s population under the age of 18.
People of color are also disproportionately represented in the data. Almost 35 percent of the state’s black population and 28 percent of its Latino population lived in poverty last year compared to just 12 percent of whites. Median household income for blacks in the state was about half of that for whites.
This article appears in Sep 23-29, 2015.
