The Big Bottom

If you live in the Huntington-Ashland metro area and your household has total income of $50,000 a year or more, that puts you in the top third.

Nationally, a $50,000 total household income would put you closer to the middle.

That one fact shows how far behind the Tri-State lags behind the rest of the nation economically.

Oh, it’s a little worse in the Charleston metro area. A $50,000 household income puts you in the top 35 percent of households compared with the top 33 percent in Huntington-Ashland.

Here at The Herald-Dispatch, we call it the “Big Bottom.” For a variety of reasons, this region has a greater proportion of households on the bottom of the income ladder and fewer at the top.

According to statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau today, about 21.5 percent of households in the Huntington-Ashland metro area have income of $14,999 a year or less, vs. 13.9 percent nationally. Cabell County’s numbers tend to mirror those of the metro area as a whole. That are consists of Cabell and Wayne counties in West Virginia, Lawrence County in Ohio and Boyd and Greenup counties in Kentucky.

In West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers the southern part of the state and includes Cabell and Wayne counties, $50,000 would put your household in the top 29.5 percent.

(I'll try to post a spreadsheet tomorrow).

Numbers in the Charleston metro area — Kanawha, Putnam, Lincoln, Boone and Clay counties — show slightly more people in the middle income bracket — $25,000 to $75,000 than in Huntington-Ashland, but not by a significant amount.

What does this mean? When half your households bring in less than $50,000 a year in wages, interest, investment income, transfer payments and other sources of money, who can buy and restore vacant and dilapidated houses? Who has money to invest in public infrastructure? Who can invest enough in a small business to make it grow?

This should be discussed in every election and in every discussion of social problems facing this area. And it should be considered when you look around and notice

But this is Huntington, where people blame old money for all the city's ills and they don't trust new money. When Tim Rollins announced plans to build Pullman Square, there was a group of people in town that didn't want his new money here. They were afraid he was coming here to make a -- gasp! -- profit.

What's the answer? There is no one answer. It's a series of answers. I do know that what we're doing isn't working. We need a better climate for business and -- this is the hard part -- more human capital. Until external forces drive some of that human capital this way, I don't see things improving, because our internal assets just aren't enough.