Within our County, there are nine municipalities and multiple communities. Overall, the county’s population is estimated to be 204,353 people from 2020 Census Bureau data, and our median age is 41 – our county has steadily been aging since 2010. Proportionately, our county’s over 65 population grew the most since 2010, with an increase of 33%: in the same time frame, that of children under 5 decreased by 2.1%. Additionally, our county’s single person households have increased by 10.2%: for seniors 65+, 41.5% live alone.
Anderson is classified as an Appalachian county, along with 5 other SC counties. Historically, Appalachia has battled poverty, unemployment, stagnant industry and lower educational attainment and wages. Progress has been made in our county as industry has diversified from the former textile mills and agricultural base to include over 20 international manufacturers. There remain Appalachia neighborhoods and communities within Anderson county. For example, two of our Census tracts, just five miles apart, have very different life experiences.
This comparative and localized information helps us understand where resources need to be brought to bear. For example, several local, state and Federal programs have focused on reducing infant mortality. Since 2013, our county has seen a decline in absolute number as well as rate of infant mortality: it is likely some of this improvement is due to focusing on identifying high risk mothers early in the pregnancy. Likewise, child fatalities as reported by SC DSS have declined each of the last two years from the exceptionally high level in 2018, and are on track to have declined again in 2021: this data is only reported at the state level because of the low number per county. You can view details here: https://dss.sc.gov/child-well-being/child-fatalities-dashboard/
High risk behaviors in children, teens and adults are also important to identify as early as possible. CDC tracks a variety of indicators of youth risky behavior for middle and high school, with reporting at the state level. Trend reports can be found in the state’s Department of Education website: https://ed.sc.gov/districts-schools/school-safety/health-safety-surveys/sc-youth-risk-behaviors-survey-yrbs/ – surveys performed every other year and include tobacco use, unhealthy dietary behaviors, inadequate physical activity, alcohol and drug use, sexual behaviors that contribute to HIV infection, other sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies and behaviors that contributed to intentional and unintentional injury, including suicide. All five Anderson county school districts have adopted a comprehensive tobacco-free model.
Some aspects of an Appalachia county that we contend with here in Anderson are a significant population over people over 25 without a high school diploma, communities with a large number of low value housing, along with persistent pockets of poverty. A secondary aspect of of an Appalachian county is a relatively high number of “disaffected youth” – which can mean, for example, youthful offenders. There are six Appalachian counties in South Carolina, and 46 counties overall in the state. One third of South Carolina’s counties have the highest proportion of youth offenders as measured by DJJ, and four of those are Appalachian counties. Anderson falls within the top ten of these counties.
https://djj.sc.gov/research-and-data/interactive-reports
https://publicreporting.scdjj.net/
These allow you to see how many juveniles in Anderson County were evaluated, how many were housed in the DJJ detention center, how long they stayed, along with the type of offense. The reports can be run on a monthly basis or up to a year.
Since you could get employment either in a textile mill or agriculture without a high school degree, at the height of those two industries, more people were incentivized to leave school without completing their degree. In our county, the textile mills and associated industries employed 50% of the population in 1990. Likewise, in 1920, there were 8,910 farms in our county- the most in the state! About a hundred years, later, in 2019, our county’s Economic Survey indicated less than 200 persons employed in the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industries (NAICS code 11). You can look at other industries as well in the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns data: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/data/tables.html
Old and low value…not a homeowner asset: homes like this are all too common in an Appalachian county. Two of the municipalities in our county have the oldest houses: Pelzer has a median year its homes were built of 1942; Iva is not far behind with 1950. Comparatively, the median year for our county is 1984. This plays into the value of a home: more than a quarter of Pelzer’s homes are worth less than $50K; for Iva, it’s over 17%.
Home-ownership of a very low value house does not provide the equity to “cash out” to move into a senior-focused community. Old or young, DHEC considers homes built before 1980 a health risk – and our county’s housing stock has 57% in this category.