Troubling Statistics

Before I get too far along with this post, I need to apologize for my absence the past week. I’ve had several hospital visits, a wedding, started a three-day revival last evening, and have a funeral tomorrow. Life has a way of overwhelming you from time to time and this was just my time.

Some weeks ago, I began to scour the internet for statistics on Appalachia and my specific county. I was looking for concrete numbers with which to construct a more accurate picture of where the region/county has been and where we now are. So much of what you hear is colored by emotions, worry, fear, and pessimism. I wanted hard, empirical evidence of what was going on.

I was not able to find very much. The most helpful information I found was county-by-county statistical reports based off of information from the last census. I dove into the report and tried to get a good handle on the statistics that were there. What I found surprised me. The picture that I hear from people in the area, while far from optimistic, pales in the light of the picture painted by the statistics. What appears to be pessimism is really blind optimism, with little reality behind it.

To make matters worse, the data in the report is old. The bleak picture is based on the assumption that the aluminum plant is still in operation. The prevailing opinion remains that the county survived before the factory went in, and they’ll survive again without it. However, since the factory went in, the steel and coal industries in the county have dried up. So what appears to be a slow, steady decline has been accelerated by a failing economy, poor schools, and the false hope that someone will come and bail them out. Already, the county has jumped to the top with the highest poverty rate of any of Ohio's 88 counties. Further, unemployment is soaring, the county's population is dropping, and the future looks disheartening.

Despite these troubling statistics, God is a god of hope. While I believe that a pie-in-the-sky hope of the nameless someone saving the county is a joke, I also believe that with God, all things are possible. With hard work, determination, and a godly vision, the people of this region can begin to see transformation. But before that can happen, they need to take off the rose-colored glasses and take a long, hard look at where they are.