Name: From coal mines to hard times: A West Virginia county braces for new public assistance cuts
Uploaded: 2026-02-23T23:02:14.000Z
Duration: 13 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The stock market has hit an all time high.

But drive just 350 miles from the nation's capital and the conversation isn't about how to get rich, but

McDowell County, West Virginia, was once the nation's largest coal producer.

It is now one of the poorest places in the country where the food stamp program started and later the opioid crisis took hold.

Today, one in three households there depends on those food stamps.

And now the program that has fed families for decades is facing the largest cuts in history.

We went to McDowell county last month and learned that this is an all too familiar pattern.

McDowell county sits deep in the southern coal fields of West Virginia, stretching more than 500 square miles across the Appalachian mountains.

There's just one traffic light and more churches than we could count.

It's a place where clean drinking water is hard to come by.

I think if you would ask probably nine out of 10 individuals here, they would tell you that they feel very much forgotten.

The government, every institution that you can think of.

Pastor Brad Davis grew up in the coal fields just over the county line and now leads congregations at five United Methodist churches in McDowell.

He spends his days listening to those who trust God, each other, and

People say, well, why don't people just move?

And my response to that is, why should we?

Betty Stepp has lived in the town of Anahwalt for all of her 76 years.

Everybody honks at everybody long enough to remember when there was still a school, a.

Yet the only business left in town to be on their best behavior.

Donald and Tom are beloved by all the widows in this area.

A retired teacher's aide, Betty and her husband live on a fixed income.

If I go to the grocery store, I can't get out of there in less than $200.

What have you had to cut back on in these times?

Across the country, families are feeling the squeeze.

Food prices are almost 20% higher today than in 2022.

I've heard a lot of folks from this community say, if we don't help each other, no one's going to help us.

Linda McKinney runs the county's largest food bank.

You're allowed to come once a month, entirely on donations and volunteers.

Since the government shut down this past fall, when Americans around the country lost SNAP benefits or food stamps for weeks, Linda says more new faces have been coming in lately.

We have a lot of young mothers that come, and

they'll say, I never thought I'd have to come.

And the children is what breaks my heart.

They didn't ask to be brought into this situation, and they suffer daily.

Every weekend, more than 100 children receive backpacks filled with food so they have something to eat when they're not in school.

The thing that we're finding, we have parents that say, well, my kid didn't get a snack bag.

And then you find out the child on Friday is eating that food on the bus.

The food that's supposed to last them through the weekend, they're eating on the bus.

At the White House, you'll hear about job growth and victory over inflation.

We just had fantastic reports on inflation way down.

But in McDowell, the median household income is about $30,000.

It's the difference between buying groceries or paying for heat.

In the 1940s, McDowell county was rich in coal jobs.

These mines powered America, helping to build railroads and cities.

At its Peak, nearly 100,000 people lived here, earning some of the nation's highest hourly wages.

But as machines moved in, mining jobs dwindled and the local economy collapsed.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned for president.

Here, I think there are at least four or five things the government can do.

The poverty he witnessed led him to launch the modern food stamp program.

McDowell county residents were the first recipients.

Today in McDowell, there are fewer than 1,000 coal jobs left, and only 17,000 people remain.

Just in the county alone, there is not enough jobs for everyone.

26 year old Tabitha Collins was a stay at home mom until her fiance was hit by a car on the job last year and left disabled.