By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
A new by-the-numbers report by a southern Oregon foundation that focuses on rural issues paints a troubling and challenging picture of Lincoln County on subjects ranging from education to food insecurity and child poverty to family financial hardship.
The “Oregon by the Numbers” report by Roseburg-based The Ford Family Foundation is the seventh it has issued since 2018, collecting data from the state’s 36 counties and drawing comparison between rural and urban areas.
Foundation researchers are quick to point out that all of the data in its latest report is from 2022 when Oregon was emerging from the three-year Covid pandemic.
“We’re still very much feeling the effects of the pandemic,” said Sarah Pytalski, the foundation’s head of policy and communications, especially with child poverty, death rates, housing and where people are living.
While Lincoln County sits exactly in the middle in Oregon’s population – 18th of 36 counties – with 50,334 residents it:
- Ranked in the bottom third of all counties — 25th — in median household income at $57,795 compared with a statewide average of $76,632;
- Ranked in the middle third — 14th at 47.2 percent — in the percentage of households in financial hardship, which is a measure of annual incomes below what is needed to cover the basic cost of living. The overall percentage for 21 rural counties was 48.2 percent; the overall Oregon rate was 44.6 percent, and the urban rate was 43.6 percent;
- Ranked in the upper third — sixth at 12.5 percent for the number of residents – who have limited or uncertain access to adequate food;
- Ranked in the upper third – sixth at 20.2 percent – for child poverty, which is the percentage of children under 18 who live in families whose income falls below the federal poverty level. The rate for 21 rural counties was 12.5 percent; the statewide rate was 13.5 percent and the urban rate 13.8 percent;
- Ranked in the upper third – seventh at 8.7 per 1,000 population – for the number of children in foster care. The rate for rural Oregon counties was 8.2 per 1,000 residents, the Oregon rate was 6.1 per 1,000 and the urban rate was 5.5 per 1,000;
And it was those numbers focusing on children that most stood out to two Lincoln County community leaders who regularly look at statistical reports and try to design or operate programs to deal with them.
“The food insecurity issues and child poverty should be a major focus of conversation in the community,” Karen Rockwell, executive director of the Housing Authority of Lincoln County, told YachatsNews. “Reports like these help give us a better awareness of who we are as a community. It should help focus conversations.”
Ford Foundation
The Ford Family Foundation started in 1957 by Kenneth and Hallie Ford, owners of Roseburg Forest Products and in 1996 became a nonprofit focused on rural Oregon and Siskiyou County, Calif. It has assets of $1.04 billion and awarded $7.5 million in grants and college scholarships in 2022.
Since 2018 it has also gathered government data in a variety of categories to give community leaders a “snapshot” of their counties.
“We aim to select measures for which data is generally available in all of Oregon’s 36 counties, regardless of their size, so that no county feels erased, marginalized or missing,” the foundation wrote about its report.
The report says Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties comprise Oregon’s one major metropolitan area. There are seven more counties with 100,000 or more people – Benton, Deschutes, Lane, Jackson, Linn, Marion and Polk — that are smaller but considered as urban areas.
“In all the rest of Oregon’s counties (26 total), the largest cities are less than 50,000, and we consider all of these counties 100 percent rural,” the report said.
Aging coastal population
There are other areas where Lincoln County’s numbers stand out, including:
- A ranking of 22 out of 36 (low is good) with a crime rate of 20.1 offenses per 1,000 residents. Measured crimes include murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, thefts and arson; The statewide rate was 33.1 and the rural rate was 23.5;
- The county’s residents are old, with the four largest age groups being 55-59, 60-64, 65-69 and 70-74;
- That results in a “labor force participation” rate of 50.4 percent compared with a 62.4 percent statewide rate. The county is ranked 29th of Oregon’s 36 counties in that category;
- The county is 80 percent white, with almost 10 percent of the population identifying as Hispanic/Latino;
- Property taxes are high — $2,507 per person — compared with other counties, ranking it the fifth highest in the state just behind Multnomah County and three rural, eastern Oregon counties. The statewide property tax per person is $1,862 and $1,437 for rural counties;
- The top industries for jobs are restaurants and bars, lodging businesses and education.
The age of county residents and how many people are working “is a known but very important demographic shift that cuts both ways,” says Paul Schuytema, executive director of the Economic Development Alliance of Lincoln County.
“It affects business decisions. Can you find a labor force?” Schuytema said. “But it also shows there is in-migration of people – but mostly of older, retirement-age newcomers.”
There is also no surprise of the report’s showing the dominance of a tourism-based economy on that generally pays low wages, he said, reflected not only in dominant industries but helping push 47 percent of residents into living in “financial hardship”.
“It’s a challenge for even two people in that arena to afford to live here,” Schuytema said. “But love it or hate it, it’s what’s driving our economy.”
Education issues
As with previous reports, especially after the pandemic and with the caveat that the report’s numbers from 2022, Lincoln County ranks low on most education measures compared with other counties. This includes:
- 31.7 percent of third-graders were reading at grade level compared with 39.4 percent for all of Oregon, 35.4 percent for rural counties and 40.7 percent for urban counties;
- 18.8 percent of fifth-graders were performing at grade level for math, compared with 30.7 percent for all of Oregon, 25.8 percent for rural counties and 32.3 percent for urban areas;
- But by the ninth grade, 83.7 percent of Lincoln County students were on track to graduate – the same as the statewide rate and higher than the rural rate of 80.8 percent;
- Lincoln County’s five-year graduation rate in 2022 was 77.7 percent, compared with a statewide rate of 83.8 percent and 82 percent for rural counties.
The Lincoln County School District’s state “report card” for 2023 – a year later than the Ford Foundation’s numbers — shows 32 percent of third-graders reading at grade level, 13 percent of eighth-graders at grade level for math, 84 percent of ninth-graders on track to graduate, and a districtwide five-year graduation rate of 80 percent.
While the 2022 numbers reflect the well-established “learning loss” from school closures and online classes during the 2020-21 pandemic, Pytalski said the numbers across Oregon for third- and fifth-graders “stood out to us.”
“We know this is occurring across the state and the West,” she said. “But it is a significant learning loss.”
Helps focus local work
But local solutions can be tougher to find, said Shannon Caplan, an assistant professor at Oregon State University Extension who helped compile the report, in a county dominated by an older population who may no longer be as concerned with youth or family issues compared with younger communities. Priorities of an older community are different, Caplan said.
While the Ford Foundation report contained few surprises for Rockwell and Schuytema, what it can do is help highlight areas where local governments, agencies and private parties can focus attention – especially when it comes to housing, families and children.
“It’s a story we already know well,” Rockwell says of people and agencies in the social service business. “We see a large geographic area with population spread all over the place. We know we are dependent on tourism-related businesses with low pay, that our population is aging or retired, and those in the labor force are paid minimum wage and struggling to make ends meet.”
All of that is made more difficult to address by runaway housing costs and inflation the past three years, she said.
Both Rockwell and Schuytema said the issues around children and food need focused attention.
“We should not have 20 percent of our children living in poverty,” Schuytema said. “That’s wrong.”
“The food insecurity issue and child poverty should be a major focus of conversation for the community,” she said, praising the Ford Foundation’s report for its clarity, being able to compare Lincoln County similar counties, and raising greater awareness of some issues. “It helps give us a better awareness of who we are.”
And that’s the goal of the Ford Foundation report, Pytalski and Caplan said, coupled with the ability of groups or communities to ask the organization for a deeper dive into the numbers.
“We are very intentional in not sharing our own interpretation, but to give counties a snapshot of what is happening in their communities in comparison with others across the state,” Pytalski said. “The hope is that it will start conversations about conditions where you live.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com