1 in 5 Tampa Bay area kids live in poverty, census says

Rising poverty cast its shadow across the Tampa Bay region in 2009, fueled by the ongoing economic downturn.

The latest government estimates, released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, show the number of people living in poverty has been growing steadily since 2006 in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk counties.

Children have been hit the hardest in the Bay area, where about one in five people younger than 18 live in poverty, according to census estimates.

Seniors, on the other had, remain insulated from the region's growing poverty. In the Tampa Bay area, fewer than 10 percent have fallen into poverty, while fewer than 1 percent, on average, lack health insurance, Census figures show.

But seniors' security can be tenuous, especially if they're supporting out-of-work children on their retirement checks, said Margaret Lynn Duggar, head of the Florida Council on Aging.

"It doesn't take much to tip the balance," she said.

The 65-and-older has government entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- to thank for its security, said Dave Denslow, an economist with the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

"That's the one group we've succeeded in bringing out of poverty," Denslow said. "The one group we haven't succeeded in bringing out of poverty is children."

Children fall into poverty as their parents lose jobs - such as the 65,000 the Tampa Bay area shed between 2008 and 2009.

In many cases, families' health insurance went with those jobs, leaving more than a half-million residents across the region without health insurance. That loss fell most heavily on children and working-age adults.

Persistent joblessness has sapped many people's economic health, pushing them into poverty, Denslow said. Unlike the recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s, when the economy sprang back with enough vigor to avoid long-term unemployment, today's unemployed workers may spend 6 months to a year finding new work, Denslow said.

"This recession is considerably deeper than they usually are, and the recovery is slower," Denslow said.

Among working-age adults, those with the least amount of education have suffered the most. More than a quarter of workers with no high school diploma fell below the poverty line in 2009. Those with a high school diploma but no college were right behind them.

"Poverty has gone up at all the education levels, but especially for those at the lower end," Denslow said. "There's no reason someone with a college degree should be unemployed."

Demand for food stamps also grew sharply in 2009. Polk County led the way, with 10.5 percent of households receiving food stamps - a figure that was half-again higher than it had been just three years earlier.

Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties, which have seen thousands of new people sign up for help since 2008, now have slightly less than 10 percent of their populations on food stamps. Most of those families had at least one person working, according to the Census.

Regionally, the increase in poverty was most pronounced in Pinellas County, where 13 percent of the population was living at or below the federal poverty level of $21,954 for a family of four - up from 10.4 percent in 2008. The number in poverty in Polk was 17 percent last year, compared to 15.4 percent in 2008, and 15 percent in Hillsborough - unchanged from 2008 but up from 11.5 percent in 2006. In Pasco, the number living in poverty dropped slightly, from 13.4 to 13 percent, but that was up from 10 percent in 2006.

In Pasco County, Jacquie Petet has seen the region's growing poverty rate up close.

Petet runs the Christian Social Services food bank in Land O' Lakes. Her small red building on U.S. 41 draws a steady stream of people seeking help.

Demand for help has been so high that Petet's group can no longer give the monetary help it once did. Food and clothing is all the group can offer now.

"We have seen a pretty drastic increase," Petet said. "In the last few months, it's hitting home here."