Columbus Dispatch, June 17, 2008: Poor and wealthy alike feeling economic pinch
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 3:08 AM
By Catherine Candisky and Mark Ferenchik
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
For first-time visitors to a Far North Side food pantry serving some of Columbus’ more-affluent suburbs, brand-name groceries and Kroger bags help dull the embarrassment of having to ask for assistance.
They can assume that their neighbors, or even their children, don’t know where they went for food.
A new report released yesterday about income trends in Ohio communities indicates that the state’s sputtering economy is devastating poor communities and wealthy ones alike.
It’s gotten so bad that the long-time gap in earnings between taxpayers in high-income and low-income areas isn’t as wide as it used to be.
Why? Because incomes (in constant dollars) are falling almost everywhere across the state, even faster in some of Ohio’s most-affluent communities. Between 2000 and 2005, median income in the Dublin school district fell 17.5 percent. In Worthington, it dropped nearly 15 percent, and in Westerville, 13 percent.
In the same period, median income in the Columbus district fell 13 percent; statewide, it dropped 7.2 percent.
The report, “Income Trends in Ohio Communities,” by Cleveland-based economist George Zeller, is based on adjusted-gross-income figures from Ohio state income-tax returns.
“A break in the long-term pattern of rising income inequality within Ohio would normally be a welcome development,” Zeller wrote.
“But, in Ohio, decreasing levels of income inequality since 2000 have been caused by declining incomes for taxpayers in communities all across Ohio. The devastating impact of the 2000s recession on incomes across Ohio was nearly universal. The rich got poorer and the poor got poorer at the same time.”
From the second quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2007, Franklin County lost 15,099 of its manufacturing jobs, or 26.7 percent, a sharper decline than Cuyahoga County’s 24.4 percent.
“For years and years, I’ve been saying that Columbus is doing better than Cleveland, but now that’s not the case,” said Zeller, who prepared the report for Cuyahoga County commissioners.
Those job losses led to others throughout the state, a key factor in why Ohio’s economy has performed so badly — only Michigan’s has been worse — since March 2001, said Bill LaFayette, an economic analyst with the Columbus Chamber.
Rhonda Leasure, who supervises job-development services for Delaware County Workforce Development, said that although her county’s unemployment rate was just 3.7 percent in April, the state’s lowest, downsizing and business closings in Franklin County have hurt.
She said she sees a stream of managers and executives who have lost work and are looking for jobs or to update their skills and certification to stay competitive.
And while families struggle to get back on their feet, many find it difficult to make mortgage payments while food and gas prices continue to rise. Indeed, the latter problem was hardly a factor for the period Zeller studied.
Such hardships are evidenced by the huge increase in families seeking help from the Salvation Army in Greater Columbus’ food pantry at the Chapel at Worthington Woods, serving Worthington, Dublin, Westerville, Powell, Lewis Center and New Albany.
“We have seen a big increase in need in suburban areas with the downturn in the home market,” spokeswoman Alice Hohl said. “We used to have no people from New Albany; now, we have people from New Albany.”
During the first five months of 2008, 529 families visited the pantry for food, almost double from the same time last year. Caseworkers say many families feel ashamed and don’t want their neighbors, friends or even children to know they needed help.
The report is at http://www.nacs.net/~georgez/income05.pdf
ccandisky@dispatch.com
mferenchik@dispatch.com