Struggling rural counties with high unemployment and poverty rates also rely the most on food stamps, state figures show.
More than one in five Oregonians receive public food aid, but that figure jumps to one in three residents in Jefferson County, where unemployment is 9.9 percent and nearly one in five residents live in poverty.
Statewide, unemployment is 8.1 percent, and 16.9 percent of Oregonians are in poverty.
Not surprisingly, other rural counties with similarly high unemployment and poverty rates have the next highest percentages of residents receiving food stamps: Josephine County at 30 percent; and Malheur, Klamath and Coos counties at 27 percent.
To see the interactive maps
The Oregonian's Mark Friesen, an online producer,
See how your county ranks and sort through the accompanying table to see which counties have the most residents reliant on food stamps and other categories.
The maps are based off June 2013 numbers from the Oregon Department of Human Services and 2011 U.S. Census figures.
They visually illustrate an underlying issue many social services and economics experts have repeated:
.
The tri-county Portland metro area accounts for 43 percent of the state's population, but just under 36 percent of the state's food stamps recipients. That's due mostly to suburban Washington and Clackamas counties, which had two of the lowest rates of food stamps reliance at 13 and 14 percent, respectively. About 22 percent of Multnomah County residents receive food stamps.
Benton County residents had the lowest rate of food stamps usage at 11.7 percent.
It should be noted that Human Services does not have branch offices in Wheeler and Sherman counties, so food stamps recipients in those counties appear in the counts for neighbouring counties.
Other recent coverage of public assistance, employment and rural issues:
PolitiFact Oregon
-- Yuxing Zheng