All points
1806 words
- McDowell County illustrates a stark divide in the American economy. While retirement accounts are growing and the stock market is reaching record highs, residents of this former coal-producing region, approximately 350 miles from Washington, D.C., are struggling to afford basic necessities. One in three households depends on food stamps, and the program faces what the report describes as the largest cuts in its history.
- McDowell County has experienced decades of economic and institutional decline. Located in the southern coalfields of West Virginia, it covers more than 500 square miles of Appalachian Mountains. The county has just one traffic light, numerous churches, limited services and communities where clean drinking water is difficult to obtain.
- Residents feel abandoned by virtually every institution. One local assessment is that approximately nine out of ten people would describe themselves as forgotten by the government and other institutions. Promises of assistance have repeatedly arrived without producing lasting improvements.
- Pastor Brad Davis serves five United Methodist churches in McDowell County. Having grown up in the coalfields just outside the county, he understands the community's difficulties and spends much of his time listening to residents who rely primarily on their faith and one another. He rejects the suggestion that struggling residents should simply leave: McDowell is their home, and they should not have to abandon it.
- Anawalt has lost much of the infrastructure that once sustained its residents. Betty Stepp, 76, has lived there her entire life and remembers when the town had a school, a theater and a doctor. Today, residents must drive approximately 45 minutes, crossing two mountains, just to buy milk, assuming they can afford a car. The only remaining business mentioned is Tom and Donald's mechanic shop.
- Betty Stepp's household struggles with rising grocery prices on a fixed income. A retired teacher's aide, she says a weekly grocery trip costs at least $200 and sometimes $300. She has reduced purchases of beef, chicken and vegetables to manage the expense.
- McDowell County's largest food bank is experiencing increased demand. Linda McKini operates the facility entirely through donations and volunteers. Residents can receive assistance once a month, and she has noticed more unfamiliar faces since a federal government shutdown the previous autumn interrupted SNAP benefits across the country for several weeks.
- Young mothers are increasingly turning to food assistance. Linda says some visitors have never previously imagined needing a food bank. She is particularly concerned about their children, who experience the consequences of household food insecurity despite having no control over their circumstances.
- The food bank provides weekend meals for more than 100 children. Every weekend, children receive backpacks filled with food to help them eat while school is closed. However, some parents report that their children consume the supposedly weekend-long food supply on the school bus on Friday because they are already hungry.
- National economic improvements have not translated into financial security for McDowell residents. While the White House highlights employment growth and falling inflation, the county's median household income is approximately $30,000. The report also notes that American food prices are almost 20% higher than in 2022, intensifying pressure on already struggling families.
- McDowell County was once one of America's most prosperous coal communities. During the 1940s, its mines supplied coal that powered American industrial development, including railroads and cities. At its peak, the county had nearly 100,000 residents, many earning some of the highest hourly wages in the country.
- Mechanization destroyed much of the county's employment base. As machinery replaced mining workers, coal employment declined and the local economy collapsed. The population subsequently fell from nearly 100,000 to approximately 17,000, while fewer than 1,000 coal jobs remain.
- McDowell County played an important role in the creation of America's modern food stamp program. John F. Kennedy campaigned in the county in 1960 and witnessed the poverty affecting its residents. The report connects what he witnessed to his subsequent launch of the modern food stamp program, with McDowell residents becoming its first recipients.
- The shortage of employment remains a central problem. Residents say there simply are not enough jobs in the county to employ everyone seeking work. The limited employment opportunities compound the effects of population decline and the collapse of the coal industry.
- Tabitha Collins, 26, is supporting a family of six after her fiancé became disabled. Her fiancé was struck by a car while working the previous year and was left unable to work. Tabitha, previously a stay-at-home mother, now works five days a week at the local nonprofit Big Creek People in Action and is the family's sole income earner.
- Tabitha has responsibility for raising four children. Alongside caring for her toddler, she helps raise her fiancé's three younger siblings. She also feels responsible for teaching the children about the local drug epidemic and the damage it can cause.
- The opioid epidemic has left families raising children without their parents. The report describes an entire generation of parents lost to the crisis, leaving surviving relatives to assume responsibility for children while often having fewer financial resources. Tabitha's circumstances illustrate this wider pattern.
- SNAP assistance does not eliminate Tabitha's financial difficulties. Even with food stamps, she regularly needs to use money from her paycheck to cover groceries, leaving less available for household bills. She describes the family as living paycheck to paycheck.
- Winter electricity costs have pushed Tabitha's family towards losing essential services. Her December electricity bill reached approximately $480, and the household received a disconnection notice. She describes the frightening decision of having to choose which bill deserves priority when there is insufficient money to pay everything.
- Federal legislation threatens to make the situation substantially worse. The report says President Donald Trump's sweeping domestic policy legislation, passed the previous year, will produce more than $1 trillion in federal funding cuts to SNAP and Medicaid over the following decade. States will be expected to assume more of the costs, while recipients face stricter work requirements.
- Tens of thousands of West Virginians are expected to lose benefits. The proposed changes threaten households that already depend on food assistance and other government support. For families such as Tabitha's, losing assistance would compound existing problems with food, electricity and household expenses.
- Residents reject the suggestion that benefit recipients are exploiting government assistance. Tabitha explains that her family depends on these programs because they genuinely need them, not because they are taking advantage of taxpayers. She emphasizes that many recipients are employed but still struggle to survive financially.
- McDowell County's political history is more complicated than its recent support for Trump suggests. The county voted Democratic for decades, supported Barack Obama in 2008 and backed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. Donald Trump has won the county in each of the last three elections, despite McDowell having the lowest voter participation in West Virginia.
- Economic desperation helps explain the county's political shift. Pastor Davis believes residents have become so desperate for change that promises to restore the coal industry have become particularly attractive. He suggests that the promise to make coal great again resonated because people were looking for someone who appeared willing to address their declining circumstances.
- Coal industry representatives have publicly rewarded Trump's efforts to revive the industry. Earlier in the month covered by the report, coal executives and miners presented Trump with a trophy naming him the undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal. The presentation followed his latest executive order intended to strengthen the coal industry.
- Residents have heard repeated promises of economic revival without seeing meaningful improvements. Their list includes a coal industry renaissance, the elimination of poverty and repairs to failing water systems. They say successive administrations and political leaders have made ambitious commitments, but conditions in the county have barely changed.
- The county's water supply is one of the clearest examples of government failure. Residents have documented black and brown water emerging from aging pipes. They attribute the contamination to deteriorating infrastructure and pollution left behind by the coal industry, and many do not trust their tap water enough to drink it.
- West Virginia's governor has allocated $8.3 million in federal funds for water and sewage improvements. The money is intended to upgrade the county's deteriorating water and sewage lines. However, county and state officials acknowledge that the allocation is substantially smaller than the investment still required.
- Pastor Brad Davis considers the water situation a public-health emergency. He says some residents have gone six years or longer without taking a hot shower because fumes from their water make them physically ill. Reports of skin rashes and burns are not uncommon.
- Families are paying heavily for safe drinking water despite already struggling financially. Some households spend upwards of $150 every month on bottled water, in addition to their normal water bills. This creates another expense that poorer residents cannot necessarily afford.
- Some residents obtain water from an old mine shaft on the side of a mountain. With the public water supply unreliable, people travel to a roadside source where water flows from the mountain and fill containers for household use. Pastor Davis finds it unacceptable that American citizens must arrange transportation to a roadside water source simply to obtain water they can use.
- Older residents have organized their own informal water-delivery network. Betty Stepp and other retirees, whose youngest members are approximately 70, deliver heavy cases of water directly to neighbors' homes. Their volunteer work fills a gap left by inadequate public infrastructure.
- Betty believes residents deserve government assistance after spending their working lives in the county. She questions why people who contributed throughout their lives should be left without reliable water and essential services. She also says the problem is not specific to one political party: whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge, residents have experienced the same lack of progress.
- Residents face a difficult choice between remaining in their hometown and leaving. Pastor Davis describes the alternatives as staying and scraping by or trying to accumulate enough money to move elsewhere. For people without financial resources or reliable transportation, leaving is hardly a straightforward solution.
- Tabitha Collins intends to remain in McDowell County despite the hardships. At 26, she is raising four children and trying to provide them with a stable future. She wants an ordinary life: a family, a home and the ability to live without constant financial anxiety.
- The community's frustration extends beyond economic hardship to a loss of basic dignity. Pastor Davis says parishioners have described feeling as though they are living in a third-world country. Asked what he tells people who express that feeling, he responds, "Amen," adding that he is tired of the situation too and believes it has gone on long enough.