President Lyndon B. Johnson began the "War on Poverty" in an Appalachian county in West Virginia in 1964, at a time when poverty rates in some parts of Appalachia exceeded rates for the nation by two or three times. But simple statistical comparisons based on the official poverty rates cannot adequately portray the long history of economic deprivation in Appalachia. Poverty in rural Appalachia cannot be measured simply by comparing family income to some arbitrary income cutoff. The low income of the people and communities in Appalachia manifests itself in many ways: in dilapidated and crowded housing; a lack of plumbing and clean running water; limited access to public utilities, social services, and medical care; geographic isolation born of poor transportation systems; and inadequately staffed and poorly funded schools. Not surprisingly, poverty in the region has often run in familiespassed along successive generations connected by the common threads of low education, few job skills, and the lack of good jobs.
