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Delta Facts:
MISSISSIPPI DELTA HEALTH AND ECONOMIC STATUS
The Mississippi Delta community is one that reflects the great health disparities that exist in the United States. There has been mounting concern over the many persistent and troubling health and social problems that seem only to worsen over time. In fact, when looked at from a global perspective, some of the following statistics of the majority of the population in the Delta, some of the worst in the nation, often exceed those of some countries in the developing world.
- In the Mississippi Delta poverty levels are significantly higher than national averages (18.5% in the Delta vs. 13.2% nationwide).
- Mississippi has the highest obesity rate in the United States.
- Mississippi leads the nation in deaths resulting from cardiovascular disease with rates of 30% above the national median.
- The highest stroke death rates for both blacks and whites are experienced in the Delta region.
- Mississippi ranked 50th among all US states with regard to income in 2001; Coahoma County per capita personal income was $19,041 in 2000.
- Failure of the educational system (de facto segregation: private white schools and black public schools) with African American children receiving poor or virtually no education; low level of literacy (69% of the population are between 0 and 44 years of age, with approximately 40% of school age).
- Lack of job skills beyond those required for basic manual labor.
- Decreasing agricultural jobs with farm mechanization; loss of small farms.
- Decreasing manufacturing jobs with factories moving to other countries such as Mexico or work moving to China with NAFTA or globalization of trade.
- In 2005, the RN shortage in the Delta community was 23.4%, whereas the average shortage in the US was approximately 13%.
Source: Dreyfus Health Foundation |
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Mississippi Delta poverty levels are
18.5%
as compared to 13.2 % for the rest of the nation.
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Mississippi River at Yazoo City, Mississippi
Photo courtesy Yazoo County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Of the first response people often have upon visiting the Mississippi Delta, Willie Morris wrote:
"Their reaction has often been a singular blend of bafflement, titillation, anger, and, not the least of it, fear; yet to the person they are struck nearly dumb by its brooding quintessential sadness, its physical power."
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Source: "My Delta. And Yours?", essay published in 1992 in A Social and Economic Portrait of the Mississippi Delta (a publication of the Mississippi State University Social Science Research Center)
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