Apr. 30--Calhoun, Jersey, Macoupin and Madison counties are among 46 Illinois counties placed on a poverty watch list, a social research agency announced today.

According to the 2009 Report on Illinois Poverty by Heartland Alliance's Mid-America Institute on Poverty, the Alton area economy is on "high alert" because of poverty indicators.

The lists were compiled based on an evaluation of four factors reflecting a county's susceptibility to pronounced poverty: high school graduation rates, teen birth rates, unemployment rates and poverty rates.

Madison and Macoupin also were on the list last year. Jersey and Calhoun were not on the lists last year, and Greene County, which had been on a poverty warning list, a more dire list, improved to the point of not being on any list at all.

Counties in Illinois are evaluated using a point system, with a higher number of points indicating a worse score. A county receives a point if its rate is worse than the state average and/or if it has worsened since the previous year. For each indicator, a total of 2 points is possible, and overall a total of 8 points is possible. Counties that score 4 or 5 points are placed on the Watch List, and counties that score 6, 7, or 8 points are placed on the Warning List.

Using this methodology, 70 Illinois counties have been placed on either the Poverty Watch or Poverty Warning lists: 46 counties are on the Poverty Watch List, and 24 counties are on the Poverty Warning List.

The county well-being index illustrates that poverty and hardship are not limited to one region of the state, as counties all across Illinois struggle with poverty-related issues. This year's Watch and Warning lists must serve as a wake-up call for leaders to begin deliberate efforts to reverse these trends in their communities, the report said.

"Illinois was in a vulnerable state before this recession, and that poses a challenge for us as we seek to provide the services needed by struggling families," state Rep. Eddie Jackson Sr., D-East St. Louis, said in the report's news release. "State leaders must work in unison with national efforts to develop comprehensive plans to revitalize our communities. We cannot afford to let the future of our state's prosperity be jeopardized."

As the national unemployment rate approaches 9 percent, the researchers forecast severe repercussions for Illinoisans already dealing with an economic climate where hundreds of thousands of families were living in poverty even before the recession. The report projects:

- As many as 405,000 more people, 132,000 of them children, are likely to have been pushed into poverty as a result of the recession.

- Nearly 1.5 million Illinoisans, almost 12 percent of the state's population, were in poverty in 2007, before the recession began.

- More than 667,000 Illinoisans lived in extreme poverty in 2007 on an annual income of less than half of the poverty line (below $11,000 for a family of four).

- An additional 16.2 percent, more than 2 million people, were on shaky financial ground with incomes between the poverty line and twice the line of poverty.