The agency created five decades ago to fight poverty in Appalachia has helped county economies grow with nearly $4 billion in spending, but the region still lags in key measures of educational, economic and physical well-being, according to a new study.
The exhaustive report ordered up by the Appalachian Regional Commission cites progress in some categories – poverty rates have fallen by about half, for instance – though the research didn’t quantify the ARC’s impact on many of the individual demographic trends. And researchers noted that other problems persist, including disproportionately high mortality rates and dependency on government checks.
The commission’s leaders acknowledge that even after half a century, the need for aid is as great as ever, a sentiment echoed by heads of charities in the region.
“We have serious work to do,” Earl Gohl, the commission’s federal co-chair, said Friday in a phone interview with The Associated Press, which obtained a copy of the study ahead of its release. “The report is more about helping us and helping our partners look at the future and understand what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve not accomplished, and we work from there. So it doesn’t do agencies any good to be self-promoters.”
The report was being presented to the region’s governors in Washington on Sunday afternoon and released on the ARC’s website the next day.