Residents may voice their opinions on how their city’s 22% poverty rate has now grown to twice the national average by contacting their city council members.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Poverty in the Fountain City continued to drastically increase last year, leaving the city with an estimated poverty rate of 22% for 2022. The enormous 22% rate is roughly twice the national average.

The increase now leaves an estimated total of 45,236 Columbusites living in poverty out of the city’s total population of 205,617.

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The city’s rising poverty becomes even more pronounced when compared to the sharply-declining rates of the state of Georgia and the nation as a whole. As a combination of bad policy and symptom-treating approaches continue to ravage the city’s poverty rate, the divide between Columbus and the rest of the country has continued to grow wider and wider as a result.

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Despite the city’s “good intentions” and its countless programs and initiatives specifically aimed at reducing poverty,  Columbus managed to increase its poverty rate by from 20% in 2020 to 22% in 2022.

While that 2 percentage-point increase may not seem like much, it is actually a very drastic rise. Those two percentage points equate to a 10% increase overall. To put it another way, there is now one more impoverished Columbusite for every ten there were in 2020.

When mapped across Columbus’ population, the past two years alone have put 4,113 more Columbus residents into poverty.

The data surrounding Columbus’ rising destitution continue to fit trends first identified by the Muckraker in August of last year. With new annual data for year-2021 at the state and national level now available for publication, the city’s local 22% estimate makes the growing divide even more pronounced.

Our city is getting poorer —quickly— while our state and nation grow wealthier around us. It is measurably apparent that the philosophy of the last decade has not worked. 

Perhaps it’s time we reevaluate our approach.

Perhaps “good intentions” are useless if they measurably produce counterproductive results over the course of a decade.

Perhaps we should develop people instead of buildings.

Residents may voice their opinions on how their city’s 22% poverty rate has now grown to twice the national average by contacting their city council members.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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