Appalachia Case Study

Appalachia is a large area with not only a lot of people, but a lot of people living in poverty. You may not know it, but for many, life is an everyday struggle, from the basic need of clothing and basic living essentials, to the more necessary food, water, health care, and housing. With a lack of these basic needs, life can be tough, and for many, this kind of poverty continues from generation to generation, with no easy way out. According to Fahe, a non profit organisation that serves Appalachia, 18.1% of the Appalachian region is living in poverty, out of the 25 million people living in Appalachia, that means that there is a total of around 4.25 million people living in poverty, which is a vast amount of people (“Appalachian Poverty”). In

I think that such poverty is linked to a lack of tertiary education, without an education it is hard to obtain a respectable, well paid job in which you will be able to support you and your family. In return this means that you have poor living conditions, any money you have is spent on the cheaper more affordable things like mountain dew, alcohol and fast foods that are unhealthy for you. Which then leads to many ongoing health issues, like dental problems, weight problems, drug and alcohol addiction and many more. It is a spiral that never ends, generation after generation these trends are continuing. Young kids now are heading into the very same path their parents have taken, and it isn’t an easy one. There is a huge range of stereotypes based around Appalachian’s; poor, shoeless mountain people, no education, unhealthy, fat, too many children, drug addicts, the list just goes on. But in reality all of these stereotypes are based around the fact of poverty, if people weren 't in poverty there probably wouldn’t be the issues of being overweight and unhealthy because families would be able to afford the more expensive “healthy” foods, higher educations would be more affordable, families could afford better living conditions and clothing, and so on, so

This relates back to how the ‘mountain people’ are unable to take advantage of opportunities for improvement and modernisation. They still think like they did many years ago, with the conception the an education is unimportant, and living life is all they need to focus on. Elam then quotes that “education is necessary for understanding, and finding the solution to social problems” (Elam 13). I can completely agree with what Elam has stated, because an education helps you understand the basic principles of living, teaches you many life skills, and also skills that will help you with your future career. With an education, social problems of poverty will be able to be eliminated over time as people would be more educated on how and why an education actually helps. It is easy to see that the simple solution to poverty is for everyone to just get an education higher than the high school level. For many people in Kentucky they still don 't understand this concept though, they need more information on how it can help them in the long run. Getting an education now may not help you immediately, but in the long run it will help the generations and yeah generation will become ore informed on how to stay above the poverty line and gain more respectable and