A federal analysis indicates at least one out of every five people who lived in a small, southern Iowa county last year had an income below the poverty line.
The national poverty rate last year was 13.5 percent. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate in Decatur County, Iowa, last year was 21. 7 percent. That’s 62 percent higher than the national rate. Decatur County sits along the Iowa/Missouri border and had fewer than 85-hundred residents in 2010. Lamoni and Leon are its largest communities.
The poverty rates in Johnson and Story Counties where large batches of college students live both topped 18 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau has an interactive map with the data for every county.
In Clinton County the poverty rate was at about the national average at 13-point-4 percent.
