Exploring Appalachian Poverty In Ohio

Key Concepts:

  • Appalachian
  • % Teen Births
  • % Poverty
  • % Child Poverty
  • Unemployment
  • Correlation
  • Bar Graph

Learning Objectives
After the completion of this module, the learner should be able to:

  1. Explain the difference between correlation and causation
  2. Define the key concepts
  3. Create a bar chart and interpret it
  4. Discuss the correlations between living in an Appalachian county in Ohio and various indicators of poverty.

Pre-Assessment:

  1. What does it mean to live in Appalachia? Are there any areas in Ohio that would be considered Appalachian? Explain.




  2. What major social problems do you think are related to living in Appalachia? Why?





Exploration #1: What does it mean to live in Appalachia? Are there any Appalachian counties in Ohio?

Go to the Appalachian Regional Commission (http://www.arc.gov). Also, for general information on Appalachia refer to your textbook and handouts given in class on Appalachia.

According to this website, how does a county in Ohio become designated "Appalachian"?

According to http://www.appalachianohio.org/counties.htm, how many counties in Ohio are designated Appalachian

Where in the state are these counties located

Exploration #2: Poverty and Appalachia

Social Scientists as well as social policy makers are very interested in trying to understand the relationship between poverty and living in Appalachia. Hopefully, by understanding this information, various programs can be developed to help decrease poverty in this region.

In this exploration, you as a researcher will be exploring the relationship between three social indicators and living in an Appalachian county in Ohio. You will be asked to make a series of predictions before you examine the actual data.

Prediction Questions:

  1. Do you think Appalachian counties will have higher levels of poverty than non-Appalachian counties? Why?

  2. Do you think Appalachian counties will have higher levels of teen births than non-Appalachian counties? Why?

  3. Do you think Appalachian counties will have higher levels of unemployment than non-Appalachian counties? Why?

In order to examine these relationships, you will need to use Kids Count datasets. (These can be downloaded from the SSDAN Kids Count data page, the file is called "tool_oh.xls"). On the desktop of your computer, you will see a KIDS COUNT Ohio icon. Click on this to start the Microsoft Excel Program using KIDS COUNT data ( When the screen appears, there will be a messaging asking if you want to enable macros, you can click on enable macros).

Relationship #1:

Click on the chart. In the area where it asks for the x-variable, click on APPOhio (1997). Then for the Y variable scroll down until you find %Poverty (Choose 1997). You will immediately see the two lines of data on the screen. For this data, 0 equals non-Appalachian counties and 1 indicates Appalachian counties. You can click Charts and Rankings below to examine the actual data that created this plot. In order to go back to scatterplots, just click on charts. We will do this one together in class.

Draw a bar graph below to demonstrate your findings.





Were your predictions accurate?

Relationship #2:

Now repeat the above steps first using % Teen Births(1999) as your y-variable and keep AppOhio as your x-variable.

Draw a bar graph below to demonstrate your findings.





Were your predictions accurate?

Relationship #3:

Now repeat the steps using unemployment (2000) as your y-variable and keep AppOhio as your x-variable.

Draw a bar graph below to demonstrate your findings.





Were your predictions accurate?

Final Exploration: Social Policy Implications

As we have learned in class, many states have adopted guidelines to help families get off poverty (TANF) based on federal guidelines. We have also discussed that different regions of the United States have different problems they are facing with issues like education, unemployment, and poverty. Answer the following questions using your sociological imagination and critical thinking skills:

  1. Based on the information you learn in this exercise, does it make sense to have a macro-level statewide program to end poverty rather than a county level program? Why or Why not?

  2. Why do you think Appalachian counties seem to be struggling with poverty more than non-Appalachian counties?

  3. What do you think should be done from a social policy standpoint to decrease these differences? Why?

For further exploration for each county, go to http://oh.profiles.iastate.edu/county. This web site contains State of Ohio data for each county. You can examine some of the other economic and social factors inflicting this region.

Post-Assessment:

  1. How would you describe Appalachia?




  2. What social factors are related to living in an Appalachian county in Ohio?




  3. How does data help researchers understand social problems?