A water tower read “Selma – A Nice Place To Live” in Selma, Alabama on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. A new report from the University of Alabama recommends enhancing existing programs to help address endemic poverty in the Black Belt. (Will McLelland for the Alabama Reflector)
University of Alabama researchers say federal, state and local officials must intensify their investments in the state’s Black Belt region to leverage ongoing improvements in roads and broadband.
The findings came in “Halfway Home and a Long Way to Go: Bridging Persistent Poverty Gap in Alabama’s Black Belt,” a brief published at the end of last month that is the first in a planned series.
“We see addressing persistent poverty in the Black Belt as both a moral imperative, and an economic necessity for Alabama’s future,” said Stephen G. Katsinas, director of the Education Policy Center and professor with the College of Education at the University of Alabama, during a recent media briefing.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
The Black Belt consists of 24 contiguous counties spanning the central portion of the state from Mississippi to Georgia. The counties combined comprise a majority Black population.
The region has struggled with poverty for decades. In some Black Belt counties, poverty rates are more than 30%, almost three times the national average of 12%, according to an analysis by the authors using 2023 data obtained from the Federal Reserve.
“Today, there are 21 counties in our state that are in persistent poverty. Nineteen are in the Black Belt,” Katsinas said.
The brief recommends targeted investments in the Black Belt to address poverty disparities between Blacks and whites and the stubbornly high rate of poverty among the youth. The authors also recommend enhancing programs that already exist that serve the area.
The brief cited economic development projects that have spurred business growth. According to the brief, Mercedes-Benz contributed $1 billion for a new battery plant in Bibb County while Hyundai invested about $300 million for an assembly plant building electrical vehicles.
Those enhancements were possible because of the infrastructure investments from the state for the past several years.
“We want to acknowledge the progress made by Gov. Kay Ivey’s administration regarding transportation and these plans to expand access in and out of the region,” said Garrett Till at the media briefing, a graduate student at the University of Alabama.
Among them is a construction project begun in 2021 to expand the West Alabama corridor to a four-lane highway in the Black Belt, starting in Thomasville in Clarke County and going north to Tuscaloosa.
The state is also attempting to expand broadband access in the region with financial assistance from the federal government.
Researchers have already identified a few candidates for projects as part of a grant that the university submitted to address poverty in the region. One would create campus-based technology programs to increase the number of electrical vehicle workers in the area for manufacturing plants based in the Black Belt.
The plan also included virtual engineering coursework geared to serve suppliers of the automobile industry already in the region.
A second set of programs were designed to help prepare adults for technology and vocational careers. This would prepare people for employment opportunities, particularly single parent heads of households and those who had been incarcerated.
Much of the report centers on the persistent levels of poverty that residents of the Black Belt experience. It is especially stark among children. The poverty rate for Black Belt children younger than 5 years old was about 40% versus 18% for the rest of the U.S, according to 2023 Federal Reserve data.
For children in the Black Belt aged five to 17, the poverty rate is 35%, compared to 16% for the same age group in the rest of the country.
“This creates a generational cycle of poverty, and it limits future workforce potential,” said Joscelyn Peterson, an undergraduate researcher at the University of Alabama.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.