CENSUS SHOWS PATTERN OF NEGLECT, POVERTY

PLANNERS, academics, political leaders, the press and the public have a lot
to digest this year, and a lot to learn, from the generous menu of 2000
Census facts and figures that are bringing every community across the
country into sharper focus.

The numbers come out in bite-size portions, often confirming conventional
wisdom. New census figures show, for example, that 117,700 grandparents in
the Mid-South were among more than 2 million nationwide who were raising
grandchildren in 2000.

It would have been hard to miss, from casual observation, the increasing
number of children growing up in grandparents' homes. Give those
grandparents credit for sacrificing many of the material comforts that
should come with age, and for filling a void created by one of the most
troubling trends in the United States: the breakdown of the traditional family.

That trend has many causes, including an epidemic of crack cocaine abuse
that ravaged segments of the Memphis population in recent years and
rendered many parents incapable of caring for their kids. The numbers
suggest an effective drug abuse prevention program could pay dividends in
the community that go far beyond helping individuals overcome drug problems.

The census data show just how big a drag family disintegration is on social
welfare agencies, the criminal justice system and other costly programs.
Government and individuals need to respond with efforts to break the cycle
of neglect, and to intervene on behalf of children who don't have full-time
parents to care for them.

Only about one-third of Memphis households, and 42.8 percent of those in
Shelby County, consist of families headed by married couples, according to
census figures released earlier this year. The county experienced a
whopping 24.7 percent increase during the 1990s in the number of
female-headed households with children under age 18.

Not coincidentally, poverty remains an intractable problem in the Mid-
South. Median annual household incomes for the three states represented in
the Memphis metropolitan area continued to lag far behind the rest of the
country, with Tennessee topping the list at $36,145 but still below the
national average of $41,343.

Poverty rates in our region continued to exceed the national average - 14.2
percent in Tennessee and 18.2 percent in Mississippi, both far above the
12.5 percent rate nationwide.

Another key to closing that gap is education. Nearly a fourth of adults in
the three-state region never graduated from high school. The percentage of
college graduates in the region still lags behind the rest of the nation.

The gap is even more pronounced among African-Americans, who make up 61.4
percent of Memphis's population and 48.6 percent of Shelby County's,
compared to 12.3 percent across the United States. Subpar educational
achievement and individual income in the Memphis area will only get worse
if state and local elected officials continue to withhold adequate
resources from public schools and the state system of higher education.

The question of resources is especially acute within the city limits.
Memphis has a disproportionately high number of children and a higher
proportion of elderly residents than the rest of the county. It has the
county's lowest median age, at 31.9, as well as the highest percentage of
citizens who are 65 or older, at 10.9 percent.

The state's population is aging faster than that of the rest of the country
as well. Despite predictions that Tennessee will be 10th among the states
in senior population by 2010, however, legislative leaders continue to
favor expensive institutional care for the elderly over programs that help
seniors remain in their homes.

As it arrives piece by piece, the full story of demographics in Memphis and
the Mid-South gives local leaders a wealth of information to help make
critical public policy decisions to guide the community's future. Smart
planning now could help avoid a recurrence of the immediate fiscal problems
that state and local politicians seem unwilling or unable to address.