Even his fiercest critics must admit that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s personal story is undeniably compelling. He grew up in impoverished, small-town America amid substance abuse, absent parents, and a general lack of opportunity with an overarching lack of hope. As he writes in his 2016 best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, his upbringing was “an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.”
In Ohio and beyond, communities that were once thriving, self-sustaining, and encouraging settlement are now struggling with few jobs and fewer reasons to stick around.
In 2019, when Louisiana State University (LSU) quarterback Joe Burrow won the Heisman trophy, he broke down in tears talking about his hometown in southeast Ohio, noting that “it’s a very impoverished area and the poverty rate is almost two times the national average. There’s so many people there that don’t have a lot and I’m up here for all those kids in Athens and Athens County that go home to not a lot of food on the table, hungry after school.”
For Vance, Burrow, and anyone else who grew up in these circumstances, it was not always this way. “Poor” regions are not made, they are allowed.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Ohio had 1,155 coal mines with more than 50,000 coal miners. By 2003, there were seven mines and only 2,000 mining jobs — respective decreases of 99 percent and 96 percent. Keep in mind, we do not use any
