There’s been a lot of talk about poverty in Rowan County lately — necessary talk that should lead to solutions. In the doughnut of prosperity that is the North Carolina Piedmont, Rowan is the doughnut hole, with a higher poverty rate than many of our neighbors.

Let’s put Rowan’s 18 percent poverty rate into perspective. Some of our neighboring counties have a 13 percent poverty rate. They are fortunate, especially compared to the rest of North Carolina. Nearly half of the state’s 100 counties had poverty rates of 20 percent or higher in 2013, according to a Census Bureau report.

Fourteen counties had more than 25 percent poverty. We’re talking about communities where 40 percent of the children live in poverty. (Here, it’s 29 percent.) In 2013, that would be a family of four living on less than $23,834.

For some families, poverty has long been a fact of life. Their parents barely scraped by, and their grandparents did the same. That’s generational poverty.

Then there’s situational poverty, which the recent layoffs from Freightliner bring into sharp focus. Losing a job often puts people in poverty for the first time in their lives, and North Carolina is one of the worst states where this could happen to them. The General Assembly has cut the maximum time a person can receive unemployment benefits from 19 weeks to 14 — the shortest period of coverage in the nation. Lawmakers also eliminated the state Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit for low- to moderate-income working people. More than 13,000 Rowan families benefited from that credit in 2013, collectively receiving $1.5 million.

Fortunately for them, the federal Earned Income Tax Credit is still in place. It was part of a tax overhaul bill that Ronald Reagan called “the best anti-poverty bill, the best pro-family measure, and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.” The bill also included lower, flatter income tax rates and other key reforms.

But back to local poverty. Maybe state leaders should take the same approach to Rowan’s higher poverty rate that some people take toward families in poverty:

Go to work, Rowan. Stop looking for federal grants and expecting someone else to solve your problems. Show some initiative. You’re dragging down the state’s economy and not contributing enough in taxes. The counties around you have more money because they earned it; nobody served it to them on a silver platter. Sure, they had the advantage of being closer to Charlotte and not relying as heavily on textiles. But you are not trying hard enough. Get some jobs.

Not very inspiring, is it? Nor productive. Our community needs solutions, not a verbal beat down. The same goes for families in poverty.