What is the Matter with Eastern Kentucky?

I was in Eastern Kentucky for a couple of years. I knew it was a poor area. I had always heard that the Appalachian area wasn't very well off economically. While I was there it did seem poor, but its hard to tell exactly how poor an area is. I didn't really know the extent of it until my last month there. About half a year ago, about when I was getting ready to leave KY, I heard about this article in the NY Times. Here is some of it.

In its persistent poverty, Eastern Kentucky — land of storybook hills and drawls ­ — just might be the hardest place to live in the United States. Statistically speaking. Clay County, in dead last, might as well be in a different country. The median household income there is barely above the poverty line, at $22,296, and is just over half the nationwide median. It’s coal country, but perhaps in name only. In the first quarter of this year, just 54 people were employed in coal mining in Clay County, a precipitous drop from its coal-production peak in 1980. That year, about 2.5 million tons of coal were taken out of the ground in Clay; this year, the county has produced a fraction of that — just over 38,000 tons. 

We lived in Clay County which is the poorest in the nation. Leslie County was about two miles away and its 3rd poorest. Eight of the twenty poorest counties in the U.S. are all in that area of Eastern Kentucky.

The place I was at, Red Bird Mission, does a great job, but all they can do is keep people going. They can't supply the jobs that the area needs.

If you drive around, you get an idea of the poverty. There are a lot of mobile homes, and not in very good shape. If you get off the beaten path they say its a lot worse. There are a lot of burned out homes. They say that is from former meth labs. I took some pictures. I felt uneasy about doing that, but literally on my way out, I decided to take some. Occasionally you drive past what looks like middle income or upper middle income houses, but their pretty rare.