USA'S POOREST COUNTIES HIT HARD BY GASOLINE PRICES

(07/10/2008)

High gas prices are hitting everyone in the country, but the hardest suffering is the nation's poverty-belt counties. A study by the Oil Price Information Service finds that the 10 counties where American families spend the largest percentage of their monthly income on gas are in the rural South. One of those county's is West Virginia's McDowell County, with several others of the state's most impoverished counties on the Appalachian Regional Commission list shortly behind. The study estimates the average family in McDowell County spends nearly $193 a month on gas, or about 13 percent of the average family income. Bryan Dabson, president of the Rural Policy Research Institute in Missouri, says rural Americans have fewer options when it comes to lessening the burden. Most have to travel greater distances to work, and the skyrocketing costs of food, products and services add insult to injury. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also says about 60 percent of rural counties also have no public transportation service at all.

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