MPR: Falling Behind in Kentucky

Falling Behind in Kentucky
By John Biewen, American RadioWorks
May, 1999


	A view of Bailey Branch hollow

The United States is the richest society in history. Yet even after eight years of uninterrupted economic growth, one in five American children is growing up poor. The U.S. child poverty rate reached a low of 11 percent in 1973. But it has grown gradually ever since - the result of a changing economy and eroding public spending on the poor. Child poverty is more prevalent in the U.S. than in any other rich country.

CHICKENS CLUCK AND JAB THEIR BEAKS into wet sandy ground outside the ramshackle trailers in Bailey Branch hollow. The trailers line a small creek that's wedged between steep hillsides. 30-year-old Virginia Trusty owns one of the trailers, a banged-up pink one, vintage 1960s. She bought it from a relative for $800. It took her a year to pay it off.

"I'm a single parent raising four kids," Virginia says, introducing her family to a visitor. "There's Paul Trusty, he's my oldest, he's 10."

As if on cue, Paul shouts at his baby sister, who's sitting by the drafty door and whimpering. "Sissy, get away from the door!"

"Then there's Britanny Trusty, she's eight," Virginia continues. "Jonathan Trusty, he's 4, and Ashley Trusty, who's 14 months old."

The baby gurgles. Four-year-old Jonathan, apparently continuing some old conversation, asks his mother, "Would you buy me a little dog?"

"I just hope they have a better future," Virginia says. "Something to look forward to; a better future than what they got - well, what I've had."

Virginia grew up poor just a few miles away, the daughter of a tenant tobacco farmer. Now her kids are four of the nation's 14 million poor children. Her family survives on public aid worth $10,000 a year - barely half the federal poverty threshold for a family of five.

"This is Mama's bedroom," eight-year-old Brittany says, showing me a tiny compartment at the back of the trailer. It's not just Virginia's room. Next to the single bed, which Virginia shares with four-year-old Jonathan, is Ashley's small second-hand crib.

Where does Brittany sleep?

"On the couch."


Ashley, Paul, Jonathan, and Britanny Trusty. (Click for larger view)

The couch that doubles as Brittany's bed is worn and stained. There's a chipboard ceiling and a patchwork of plywood paneling on the walls. The trailer is heated by a coal-burning stove.

"Well, it did stay real cold in here [until] we put plastic stuff up over the windows," Virginia says. "Sort of like insulated that to keep the cold air and stuff out. It's home. It's home for me and the kids. It's a roof over our head for right now, until better things happen for us."

Better things, such as a job. Or a man with a job.

Virginia is almost a prototypical welfare mother. She went on AFDC when her first son was born 10 years ago. She never married. Each of her kids has a different father. None stayed around for long, and none helps Virginia support the children.

"I can't give em everything they want but I try, I do," says Virginia.

She doesn't own a car. Her phone service comes and goes with her ability to pay the bill.

You wouldn't guess it from economic reports, but 20 percent of American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty line. That's almost double the child-poverty rate when Virginia was small, in the early 1970s. Poor kids have gotten poorer, too. There's a complicated stew of reasons. The number of single-parent families has grown. Public aid doesn't buy as much as it used to. And the jobs available to workers without special skills are more likely to pay poverty wages.

"I think it's good that the economy is up," Virginia says, "but what's it gonna do for people in eastern Kentucky? Unless'n you want to work at a fast food restaurant or a grocery store. And that's not enough to raise a family on."

Poverty, working or not

Under welfare reform, Virginia is required to look for a job. Until she finds one, she has to work for her welfare check. Kentucky's welfare-to-work law requires her to put in 25 hours a week at the county recycling center in downtown Salyersville. This day she's all alone at the center, crushing plastic laundry bottles with her tennis shoe.

"It ain't no fun job, tell you the truth, but it's just to keep the kids fed and took care of. This is the only means I've got right now."

Her $383 monthly check amounts to a wage of less than $4 an hour.

"Ain't nobody gonna hand you nothing for free," she says, neatly summing up the nation's post-welfare-reform ethos. "They ain't."

While some who've gone from welfare to work have also left poverty behind, many have not. A recent report found a third of poor children now have working parents.

Two such children, cousins to Virginia Trusty's kids, live just down the hollow.


	Wilbur and Janet Wallen married 20 years ago, when he was 17 and she was 13. (Click for larger view)

At 4:30 one morning, Virginia's brother-in-law, Wilbur Wallen, stokes the fire in his wood- and coal-burning stove. His wife, Janet - Virginia's older sister - stands at the kitchen counter, making sandwiches and clunking four Pepsis into Wilbur's lunch cooler. The Wallens' four small dogs bustle about. Their two sons, age 14 and 12, are still asleep; they share a single bed in the back of the trailer.

Finally, with all of the regular preparations complete, Janet daubs hydrogen peroxide on the back of Wilbur's swollen right hand. He poked a deep hole in it on the job a couple of days ago. "It's sorer than it was yesterday," he mutters.

Yes, he says, he could have taken the day off and collected worker's comp.

"But see if I'd have done that, we're on overtime right now and I wouldn't have got overtime. And I need all the money I can get. See, my boy, he's graduating from 8th grade this year. I've gotta buy his cap and gown for him. $25, I believe they said. And some schools is all the time wanting money for something."

Until a year and a half ago, the Wallens relied on welfare and whatever minimum wage jobs Wilbur could find. Now the family lives entirely on Wilbur's wage at a truck assembly plant: $8.30 an hour.

"Well, I've got to admit I've got a little better job than I used to," he says, acknowledging that even he might be benefiting from the nation's economic growth. "But you gotta travel so far to get to it."

Far, indeed. 184 miles, round-trip, every day. Even low-paying jobs are scarce in the eastern Kentucky hills. Wilbur works two hours away in the central Kentucky town of Richmond.


	Sisters Janet Wallen and Virginia Trusty. (click for larger view)

Outside in the cold March morning, his 1981 Dodge (purchase price: $400) whirs and spits and quits, then finally turns over on the third try. He races the engine for a couple of minutes, then pulls the car door closed. The Dodge rumbles off down the dark gravel road. Wilbur's reward for driving four hours a day is a paycheck that lifts his family just to the federal poverty line - about $17,000 for a family of four.

Not just an Appalachian thing

Take a drive in Appalachia, and you'll understand one big reason for its chronic economic problems. Businesses don't want to locate in a place that's hard to get to. You can't drive more than 35 miles an hour on roads that dip and swerve like blacktop ribbons through the hills.

Some things have changed since the 1960s, when Robert Kennedy and other War on Poverty advocates drove these roads. They called attention to laid-off coal miners and their hungry, shoeless children. The images jabbed at the nation's conscience. The resulting federal spending created some middle-class jobs for social service workers but mainly strengthened the safety net. Food stamps, Head Start, and Medicaid eased the symptoms of poverty without curing it.

So, why not move to a place with more and better jobs?

"I just like to stay somewhere where I know all the folks and know all the places," says Janet Wallen, washing the dishes in her Bailey Branch trailer. "I know most of the places in Magoffin County because I was born and raised at 'em, and I know most of the people in Magoffin County. I've got a lot of kin in Magoffin County and everything. Some will help you and some won't. You just take what you can get. And that's the way we do. We just help each other out around here, that's what I like about it."

In short, the hills are home.

But while it might seem irrational to stay in a place with a chronically depressed economy on the grounds that it provides security, the Wallens' decision to stay put makes some economic sense. A move to a city would mean more expensive housing. (They bought their trailer for $500.) And it probably would not open doors to lucrative jobs. The new global, information economy pays a premium for the workers it needs most - those with education or technical training. It treats people without those assets as a dime a dozen, as they are in places like Mexico and Indonesia.

Janet and Wilbur Wallen are educational have-nots.

"I went to seventh grade," Janet says. "I passed out of seventh grade, but I didn't go to the eighth grade. I got married 3 days after school was out. I was 13 years old when I got married. He was 17."

Janet and her sister Virginia grew up poor, as did Janet's husband Wilbur, and now they're poor adults. Statistics say their children are at high risk of repeating that cycle. Child poverty is not just a condition, but often a trap. Poor children get sick and die more often than middle-class kids. They commit more crimes. And they're twice as likely to drop out before finishing high school.

"My youngest one," Janet says, "if I'd give him the chance, he'd quit school right now. But we won't give him that chance."


Janet and Wilbur's son Jim Wallen (click for larger view)

In the late afternoon, an orange bus crawls up the hollow and drops off a half-dozen Bailey Branch kids, including 12-year-old Jim Wallen. There's a chilly spring drizzle and the creek is running fast. Jim walks down by the brown stream to give his rooster, Red, some fresh water. He swapped another rooster for Red, he explains, because Red is "prettier and he fights better."

Jim is a handsome, athletic-looking boy with tousled blond hair. He says his mom is right; he doesn't like school much. His grades range from B's to D's. And he doesn't get along with some of his teachers.

"They're grouchy and stuff, they gripe at me and stuff. Mostly because I don't listen to 'em. And I turn my work in and they say I don't turn it in, and they say I get low computer grades and stuff, low testing scores."

Jim doesn't care much about grades and computers. He wants to drive race cars and work construction.

"It's what you got"

Americans have carried on a long-running, politically-loaded debate about why poor children don't fare as well, on average, as middle-class kids. Some say poor parents fail their children by setting bad examples - teen pregnancy, addiction - and neglecting to teach the value of education. Others say parents who are the product of generations of poverty can't be expected to guide their kids into the middle class.

One nearly-legendary Appalachian says she knows from personal experience what happens to many poor kids.

	How do social pressures hobble poor children?
	Listen to an excerpt from Eula Hall interview RealAudio 3.0

"You give up," says Eula Hall. "Very, very bright, talented children. If they were just encouraged. And if you don't dream, you soon die."

Hall is a large 71-year-old woman with a gray beehive hairdo and a kind face. She grew up in severe poverty, then endured an abusive marriage for more than 30 years. Finally, in middle-age, she gathered the strength to change her life. She used a federal grant to found the Mud Creek clinic for poor people in Grethel, Kentucky. Hall believes that today the social divide that beats poor kids down is more palpable than ever.

"It's so sad, so sad to see little children withdrawn and isolated from the rest of, lots of other children, because of their parents having to live in poverty. It's class. You know, it used to be the black and the white, but anymore it's the rich and poor. It's what you got."

Jim Wallen says he doesn't know about class divisions. But he does feel picked-on in school.

"I mostly fight a lot," he says. "Because [other kids] always make fun of me. Say I'm ugly and fat, stupid."

I point out that he's not any of those things. So why would kids say such things?

Jim shrugs. "I don't know. They don't like me, I guess."


Percentage of poor children under the age of six living in extreme poverty, 1975 - 1994 (click for larger view)

For a lot of kids like Jim, the trouble starts before the first bus-ride to kindergarten. Recent studies have found that a child's chances of succeeding in school are damaged most profoundly by deep poverty in early childhood. And it's precisely the children at that vulnerable pre-school age who are most likely to be poor - and to be extremely poor. Today, almost half of young children whose families live below the poverty line have incomes below half of the poverty line. That is, $8,000 or less for a family of four. It's no wonder, then, that 4.2 million American kids face moderate to severe hunger, according to the government. That means they miss meals or their parents can't afford to feed them a balanced diet.

Behind the starting line

It's lunch time at the Mayking Head Start center in Letcher County, Ky. The four-year-olds and their teachers sit at round tables and, after singing grace - "A-B-C-D-E-F-G, thank you Lord for feeding me" - they dish up spaghetti, sweet corn, lettuce salad and buttered bread. The children get breakfast at the center, too.


	Four-year-old Allie Morgan at the Mayking Head Start Center near Whiteburg, Kentucky. (click for larger view)

"Our lunch is not what you would consider a lunch. It is more like a balanced dinner," says center director Jeannette Yonts. "So that if this is the only meal - and breakfast - that the kids get, then they have already had their daily needs."

Head Start is a popular federal program that's designed to give poor preschoolers a boost, but many experts say while it's well-intentioned, it's often too little, too late. And Congress funds Head Start to serve just one in three eligible children.

Yonts says it's easier to feed children than to fill other holes in their lives. According to parent surveys, only a quarter of the kids at the Mayking center have books at home.

"The ones that do really enjoy being read to - and you can tell which ones have been [immersed] into books and literature of any kind," says Yonts. The majority of the kids, she says, "pay no attention whatsoever to books."

Back at Virginia Trusty's trailer on Bailey Branch, eight-year-old Brittany Trusty digs for the only four children's books her family owns. They belong to her baby sister, Ashley.

"Sissy, this is her Christmas present she got from her social worker," Brittany explains.

Does Brittany have any books of her own?

"No."

Parents in poverty can't afford many books or educational toys. It's tempting, though, to find fault with Brittany's mother, Virginia, for spending $30 dollars on a used Nintendo instead of books. Maybe that's one reason 10-year-old Paul struggles in school. Then again, Brittany gets straight A's.

"I want to be a teacher," she proclaims.

In 1997,
26 million Americans visited a food shelf or soup kitchen.

Of course, some children do climb over the barriers that come with growing up poor. Americans love their stories. We spend less time considering stories like that of Jim Wallen, the 12-year-old who would quit school tomorrow if his parents would only let him.

Jim eats his evening meal in a chair in front of the TV. He taps on his plate with his fork, rapping out the beat to an ad for a college scholarship program. To his mother's annoyance.

"Jimmy, quit," Janet says sharply. "Eat your supper and quit."

If you ask Janet what she thinks about the middle-class world on the television, the implied contrast to her own life seems to poke at her pride.

"We get everything we need," she insists. "Long as we get what we need and everything, make a living, that's it. And which - [Wilbur's] out making a living and everything, [I'm] at home taking care of the kids and the house."

But at other times, Janet shows a very different - and fierce - wish for her sons. For instance, when Jim says he'd like to get married at 18. Janet, who as a teenage bride moved in with her husband's parents, clearly doesn't want the practice repeated in the next generation. "Where you gonna take her to?" Janet demands.

"I don't know," Jim says sullenly.

"Without the money and without a home, you gotta have the money and you gotta have a home to take her to!"

"I'm gonna get a home first," Jim says weakly.

Janet takes a breath and launches into a full-blown lecture. "There ain't no way you can get married at the age of 18 and think that you can go through college, get a job, and support a family, and get your own home and everything else. You can't do that. That's what Mommy and Daddy's been a-trying to tell youn's. You get your education and everything, then you can get you a woman. Other than that, if you don't go through all of that, then you ain't gonna have nothin'. And you know it."

Janet and Wilbur Wallen are drilling their sons on perhaps the two most important steps out of poverty: Stay in school, and don't have kids until you can support them. There are hopeful signs, such as the falling teen pregnancy rate, that young people are increasingly grasping those rules of the modern economy. Still, millions of poor kids enter the race well behind the starting line. For many of them, knowing the rules may not be enough.