A new report by a state bud­get think tank says that quar­ter of West Vir­gini­ans live in poverty. The study says that the effects of poverty are even worse on the state’s chil­dren. Every time that state’s poverty per­cent­age climbs just one per­cent, it puts another 8,000 chil­dren in poverty.

From The Charleston Gazette, Ali­son Kneze­vich has this analy­sis of the report.

The reces­sion could increase the num­ber of chil­dren liv­ing below the poverty line by more than a third, to 34 per­cent, say ana­lysts at the West Vir­ginia Cen­ter on Bud­get & Pol­icy. Econ­o­mists define the poverty line as a house­hold income of $21,910 or less for a fam­ily of four.

On Thurs­day, the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau released data show­ing that 13.2 per­cent of Amer­i­cans lived in poverty in 2008 — the most since 1997. State and local fig­ures are set to come out Sept. 22.

But “this data that’s com­ing out … is not going to really reflect the real­ity of West Vir­ginia today,” said Paul Miller, a pol­icy ana­lyst at the cen­ter. “The worst is still on the hori­zon for West Virginia’s children.”

That’s because West Vir­ginia entered the reces­sion later than most states, he said. The U.S. Cen­sus poverty rates are based on data from last year — when only 4.5 per­cent of West Vir­gini­ans were unem­ployed. This July, the state’s unem­ploy­ment rate was 8.6 per­cent, accord­ing to Work­force West Virginia’s lat­est data.

The state’s poverty rates were high even before the reces­sion hit. About one in five West Vir­gini­ans lived below the poverty line, and one in four chil­dren did, Miller said.

Appli­ca­tions for pub­lic assis­tance are also grow­ing at a stag­ger­ing rate as more West Vir­gini­ans turn to pro­grams like the fed­eral Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram, com­monly known as food stamps.

Between Novem­ber 2008 and June 2009, food-stamp case­loads grew 20 per­cent, accord­ing to data the state Depart­ment of Health and Human Resources gave to Miller. In the 22 months before that, cases had grown only 6 percent.

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