2014/12/28 – STARKVILLE – Since we’re headed into a courthouse-to-statehouse election year in Mississippi, the political conversation will of course turn to who is responsible for any and every thing that’s not to the liking of the state’s electorate.

Democrats tell us that Mississippi’s troubling unemployment numbers are the fault of Republicans in control of the legislative and executive branches of government in Mississippi. Republicans tell us that Mississippi’s health care disparities are the fault of Democratic President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats who supported the Affordable Care Act.

The finger-pointing will continue, such is the political process.

But there’s one correlation in Mississippi that’s been true all of my life and that’s the undeniable fact that our state ranks at or near the bottom in most economic indices and likewise we rank at or near the bottom in educational attainment.

Here’s what a recent 24/7 Wall St. website analysis found: “Based on recently released educational attainment data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, West Virginia had the lowest level of educational attainment, with 18.9 percent of adults 25 and older having attained at least a bachelor’s degree in 2013. Conversely, more than 40 percent of Massachusetts residents had at least a bachelor’s degree, the highest percentage nationwide.”

So Massachusetts led the nation in educational attainment, has a median household income of $66,768 (6th highest in the U.S.) and only 11.9 percent (11th lowest in the nation) living below the poverty level.

Conversely, Mississippi has the second-lowest educational attainment in the country, finishing second to West Virginia. Mississippi has a median income of $37,963 (lowest in the nation) and 24 percent living below the poverty level (highest in the nation).

So how did the 24/7 Wall St. writers assess the Magnolia State? “Nearly one in four Mississippi residents lived in poverty last year, by far the highest rate in the nation. More than 35 percent of people without a high school diploma in the state lived in poverty, also the highest rate compared to all other states.

“The poverty rate was substantially lower for residents with at least a bachelor’s degree, at just 6.7 percent. When compared to educated residents in other states, however, this was still among the highest rates in the country. Even residents with the highest level of educational attainment — professional or graduate degrees — earned considerably less than those in other states.

“The median earnings of Mississippi residents with such degrees was less than $48,000 last year, the lowest nationwide,” the 24/7 Wall St. writers concluded.

The conclusion that low educational attainment, poverty and joblessness go hand-in-hand is inescapable. When I was a child, Democrats enjoyed the same dominance in state government that Republicans enjoy today.

So the finger-pointing is, in most cases, simply political posturing.

As former Gov. William Winter and others in both parties have observed in the past, the road out of abject, withering and persistent poverty in Mississippi surely runs by the doors of the schoolhouse, the community college, the vocational-technical training facilities and the university. An educated workforce attracts and commands more and better jobs.

But as clear as the evidence is of the correlation between educational attainment and poverty, lawmakers face other vexing issues in a volatile election-year session in 2015.

The issues are varied and include prisons and public corruption, public health care and the future of the state’s rural hospitals, the state’s infrastructure and the future of funding for that system, and many other challenges.

The good news is that unlike some prior years – and likely some future years as well – the Legislature has some resources with which to address the larger problems this year. While employment numbers remains troublesome, the state’s revenue stream has been steady – indicative of a trajectory of fiscal recovery in the state’s economy.

Source: Sid Salter

Gulf Live