Largest city in Oregon is ‘Poverty’

Image credit: Oregon Center for Public Policy

“If poverty were a city in Oregon, it would be the state’s largest city,” according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

The policy center released a fact sheet on Thursday, the same day the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to cut funding and tighten eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. One in five Oregon residents received “Oregon Trail” benefits last month, according to KDRV Newswatch 12 reporter Rob Scott.

From the Oregon Center for Public Policy:

“About 660,000 Oregonians lived below the federal poverty threshold in 2012.

“To put that total in perspective, you would have to add almost half of Salem’s population to the number of people living in the City of Portland (587,865) to equal the number of people living in poverty last year.”

According to the policy center’s fact sheet, the rate of poverty in Oregon in 2012 was 17.2 percent, compared to 14.3 percent in 2009.

In spite of national economic recovery, more than 120,000 Oregonians fell below the poverty line after the official end of the nation’s Great Recession in June 2009.