The fight against innumeracy

The Vermont News Guy is in my Reader on a trial basis, and so far I'm fairly happy.  And I should love his post on Numbers and Words, but unfortunately while railing against innumeracy, he commits the crime himself.  Sigh.  To wit, the problematic portion of the post says:

Vermonters between the ages of five and 17 had almost the same poverty rate (10.6 percent) as the entire population, but the rate for children under five was a surprisingly high 16.2 percent. Even that was lower than in most other states. In Mississippi, more than 30 percent of children under five were poor.

Unlike most states in the deep South, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and both Dakotas, no county in Vermont had a poverty rate of anywhere close to 30 percent. Still, there were obvious – and perhaps not surprising – differences among the state’s 14 counties. The lowest rate was Grand Isle County’s 8.4 percent; the highest Essex County’s 14.8 percent.

The rates in the rest of the state were as follows: Addison 10.4; Bennington 12.2;  Caledonia 11.8; Chittenden 9.6; Franklin 9,9; Lamoille 10.1; Orange 10.9; Orleans 14.3; Rutland 11.6; Washington 9.7; Windham 9.8; Windsor 9.3.

When he notes that no county in Vermont had a poverty rate close to 30 percent, that 30 percent benchmark is set by the percentage of children under five in poverty in Mississippi.  For the state of VT, the poverty rate for children under five is 16.2, but then he lists the poverty rate for all people, instead of the rate for children under five, by county.  What he wants to look at are the by-county poverty rates for children under 5.