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-and-a-half percent. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate in Decatur County, Iowa, last year was 62 percent higher — for a poverty rate of 21-point-seven percent. 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.

(Go to the following link to find an interactive map with the data for your county:  http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/data/interactive/saipe.html?s_appName=saipe&map_yearSelector=2015&map_geoSelector=aa_c&s_state=19#view=Mapping )

Poverty rate for counties in southwest Iowa: Cass County, 13.9%; Adair County, 11.9%; Adams County,12.5%; Audubon County, 10.3%; Guthrie County, 10.4%; Harrison County, 9.9%; Mills County, 10.3%; Montgomery County, 13.4%; Shelby County, 9.2%; Fremont County, 12.1%; Page County, 15.7%; Ringgold County, 14.1% and Taylor County, 14.7%.

The poverty rate in Polk County — Iowa’s largest — was below the national rate. About one out of every 10 residents in Des Moines and the surrounding area had income below the poverty line last year.

(Radio Iowa)