Poverty in Rural America:
What do we know and what do
we need to know?
Bruce Weber
RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center
In the Shadows of Poverty: Strengthening the Rural
Poverty Research Capacity of the South
A Conference co-sponsored by
Southern Rural Development Center and
RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center
July 21, 2004 Memphis, TN.
Road Map

Some stylized facts about poverty and place

Poverty rates across the rural-urban continuum

Persistent poverty counties

High poverty census Tracts

What do we know? A Selective Review

Toward a Rural Poverty Research Agenda


RPRC: a collaboration to build a rural poverty research
agenda
New Rural Poverty Research Initiatives
Some Stylized Facts about
Poverty and Place:
The Rural Version
 Poverty
rates have historically been higher in
nonmetropolitan counties
 Poverty rates are highest in the most remote
rural counties
Year
20
01
19
99
19
97
19
95
19
93
19
91
19
89
19
87
19
85
19
83
19
81
19
79
19
77
19
75
19
73
Percent
20
19
71
19
69
19
67
19
65
19
63
19
61
19
59
Poverty rates by residence, 1959-2001
35
30
25
Nonmetro
15
Metro
10
5
0
Persistent Poverty Counties
 There
were 382 Persistent Poverty Counties
in 2000. (These counties poverty rates of
20% or higher in each decennial census
between 1960 and 2000)
 Persistent Poverty Counties are:
 Geographically concentrated
 Overwhelmingly rural (95 percent)
Persistent Poverty Counties
Counties with poverty rates >20 % in 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999
Persistent Poverty Dynamics:
Persistent Poverty Leavers
 189
counties were “persistent poverty
leavers”: they left persistent poverty status
between 1990 and 2000
 The metro counties were more likely to be
leavers than nonmetro counties
 Nonmet adjacent counties were more likely
to be leavers than nonmet nonadjacent
counties
Persistent Poverty Dynamics
Persistent Poverty Leavers
Persistent Poverty Leavers:
Left Persistent Poverty Status between 1989 and 1999
Metro (17)
Nomet Adjacent (73)
Nonmet Nonadjacent (99)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau and
Economic Research Service, USDA
Map prepared by RUPRI
Percent of Counties in each Urban Influence
Category that Left Persistent Poverty Status
60.0
Percent of Counties
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
Large Metro
Source, U.S. Census Bureau and ERS, USDA
Small Metro
Nonmetro: Adjacent
to Large Metro
Nonmetro: Adjacent
to Small Metro
Urban Influence Category
Nonmetro:
Nonadjacent
High Poverty Census Tracts
 Poverty


7,030 tracts – 11.7 percent of all tracts
Geographically dispersed
 ERS

rates of 30% or more in 1990
Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes
High poverty most prevalent in core area tracts
and remote rural areas
High Poverty Census Tracts, 1990
Percent of Tracts in each
RUCA Code in High Poverty
16.0
Commuting Tracts
Core Tracts
Remote Rural Tracts
14.0
12.0
10.0
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
1
2
3
Source: U.S. Census Bureau and ERS, USDA
4
5
6
RUCA Code
7
8
9
10
Poverty Rates by RUCA Code
20.0
Core Tracts
Commuting Tracts
Remote Rural Tracts
18.0
16.0
14.0
12.0
10.0
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
1
2
3
Source: U.S. Census Bureau and ERS, USDA
4
5
6
RUCA Code
7
8
9
10
Alternative Rural Urban Continuum:
Central City to Remote Rural County
Poverty
AmongAmong
SingleSingle
Mother
Families
Figure
B. Poverty
Mother
Families,
Residence: 1992
1992 and
by by
Residence,
and1998
1998
Percent (%) below low-income level
60
1992
1998
50
40
30
20
10
0
central city
balance of metro
nonmetro adjacent counties
Place of residence
nonmetro nonadjacent
counties
Stylized Facts about
Poverty and Place Revisited
 Poverty
rates are highest and most
persistent in
 urban cores and
 remote rural places
 Persistent poverty became increasingly
concentrated in large urban counties and
remote rural counties in the 1990s
What do we know about…
 rural
poverty and its causes?
 reducing
 policies
rural poverty
to reduce poverty?
Articles published in Rural Sociology on
poverty and/or welfare receipt, 1936-2003
RSS Poverty
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Gene Summers’ RSS
Presidential Address
“The People Left Behind”
Taskforce Volume
1993
1991
1967
Welfare
Reform
Journal first published at
the end of the depression
1936
1996
1966
Number per year
1996
3 per. Mov. Avg. (Number per year)
What Have We Learned About …
rural poverty and its causes?
 Qualitative
Research: Ethnographic Studies
 Quantitative Research: Community level
studies


Counties/tracts are units of analysis
County/tract poverty rates are explained by
county/tract characteristics
 Quantitative


Research: Contextual studies
Individuals/ households are units of analysis
Odds of being in poverty are explained by
individual and community characteristics
Qualitative research

Provides insight into the experience of poverty (Rank)


Having to make significant compromises regarding daily
necessities: food, rent, heat, healthcare
Stress of living under threat of not being able to afford
necessities if, for example, car breaks down


Stunted development
Provides insight into the underlying social and
economic processes (Duncan)

How social class affects economic outcomes

How race affects economic outcomes
“Community” Studies
 County




poverty rates are affected by:
industry structure,
individual and family demographics,
labor market conditions, and
metro/nonmet residence
 Potential
for ecological fallacy
Contextual Studies of Rural Poverty

8 contextual studies of rural poverty

6 studies of impact of living in rural area on
odds of being in poverty (McLaughlin/ Jensen;
Brown/Hirschl; Haynie/Gorman; Lichter et al.;
Kassab et al.; Cotter)

2 studies of impact of living in rural area on
poverty dynamics (odds of exit and entry into
poverty) ( both by Jensen/McLaughlin)
Contextual Studies of Rural Poverty
 Dependent
variable: log-odds of individual
/household being poor or entering/exiting poverty
 Individual Characteristics: age, race, education,
disability status, family structure, number of
children, employment status of head/spouse
 Community Characteristics: tightness of labor
market, industrial/occupational structure of
economy, demographics of labor market
Contextual Studies of Rural Poverty
 Different levels
of “community context”

Rural dummy variable only: 3 studies

Rural plus U.S. region: 2 studies

Rural plus U.S. region plus
economic/social structure of labor
market variables : 3 studies
Contextual Studies of Rural Poverty:
Estimates of “Rural Effect”
Contextual Controls
Rural only
Rural plus U.S. Region
Rural plus U.S. Region
plus Local Labor Market
Odds ratio
for “rural” variable
1.5 (1989)
1.66-1.68 (1979)
2.12-2.30 (1989)
1.5-2.7 (1985)
1.43 (1989)
1.19 (HLM, 1989)
Contextual Studies of Rural Poverty:
Effects of Community Characteristics
Community Characteristic
Effect on individual odds
of being poor
Local unemployment rate
High rate increases odds
Job share in manufacturing
sectors
High share reduces odds
Share of population
High share increases odds
without high school degree
Contextual Studies of Rural Poverty:
Rural Interactions
Interaction
Effect
Employment status Having a job reduces poverty
risk less in rural areas (3 of 4
studies)
Additional hours
Working additional hours
worked
reduces poverty risk less in
rural
Local
Higher unemployment rates
Unemployment
increase poverty risk more for
Rate
rural women
Major Conclusions from
Contextual Studies
 People
living in a rural area have higher
odds of being poor, controlling for
measured individual and community
characteristics
 Local labor market conditions account for
half of the difference in poverty odds
between rural and urban places
 Having an education and a job and working
more hours has less poverty-reducing
impact in rural areas
What Have We Learned About…
Reducing Poverty Rates?
County level analysis (Rupashinga and Goetz, 2003)
 What contributed to greater reductions in poverty rate
between 1990 and 2000:


Higher employment rates, greater female labor force
participation, higher shares of high school graduates,
higher shares of self-employed, greater social capital
What contributed to smaller reductions in poverty rate
between 1990 and 2000:

Being a small remote rural county (Beale code 7 and 9),
having a high share of population under 18 years of age and
having a high share of non-Black minority population
What Have We Learned About…
Reducing Poverty Rates?
 Tract
level analysis (Crandall and Weber, 2004)
What contributed to greater reductions in
poverty rate between 1990 and 2000
•
•
•
•

Higher employment growth rate
Higher shares of high school graduates
Higher shares of college graduates
Greater social capital
What contributed to smaller reductions in poverty
rate between 1990 and 2000
• Being surrounded by other high poverty tracts
What Have We Learned About …
Policy Impacts?
 Quasi-Experimental
Research on welfare
policy changes in 1990’s (McKernan et al.,
Weber et al.)


Both studies find positive policy impacts on
employment; one study found met/nonmet
differences (impact in nonmet is greater)
Weber et al. find no policy impact on poverty in
either met or nonmet
What Have We Learned About …
Policy Impacts?
 Experimental
Research: Minnesota Family
Independence Program Experiment
(Gennetian et al.)

Impacts of MFIP (welfare reform) on employment
and earnings larger in metropolitan counties
Toward a Rural Poverty Research
Agenda
 Good
research requires passion, rigor, and a
supportive community
 Passion
focuses research on the right questions
 Rigor


A
supports getting the right answers
Theoretical and Methodological Challenges
Data Challenges
community of scholars and practitioners
keeps the passion alive and enforces the rigor
Rural Poverty Research Center
A community of policymakers, practitioners and
researchers seeking to understand how policy and
practice can reduce poverty across the rural-urban
continuum.
 Co-located in


RUPRI in the Truman School of Public Affairs,
University of Missouri


The Department of Agricultural Resource and
Economics at Oregon State University
Collaboration with the Regional Rural
Development Centers
RPRC Research
 RPRC




projects: 2004-05
“Neighborhood Effects” in Rural
Communities: Concentrated Poverty and
Employment Outcomes
What Reduces Poverty in Persistently Poor
Rural Areas?
Sentinel Communities: Tracking and
Explaining Community Capacity in Rural
Places
Material Hardship in Rural and Urban Places
 Small
Grants Program 2004-05
Research Conferences

National Agenda Setting Conference : The
Importance of Place in Poverty Research and Policy
March 3-4, 2004 in Washington DC

North Central Regional Research Conference:
Culture, Governance and Rural Poverty
(w/NCRCRD) May 25-27, 2004 Chicago

Southern Regional Research Conference: In the
Shadows of Poverty (w/ SRDC) July 21-23, 2004
Memphis

Northeastern and Western Regional Research
Conferences: Winter 2005
RPRC Mentoring
 Postdoctoral
 Rural
Research Fellowships
Poverty Dissertation Fellowships
 Undergraduate
 Professional
Leadership Program
Development Travel Fund
RPRC Dissemination
 Quarterly
Newsletter: Perspectives on
Poverty, Policy and Place
 Working
Paper Series
 Research
Briefs
 RPRC
UPDATE (quarterly email)
 RPRC
website
What do we need to know?
 What
are the individual processes &
community/ neighborhood processes &
institutional mechanisms that generate and
maintain poverty?
 What community strategies have been most
successful in reducing poverty, and how does
this vary across community types?
 How does policy interact with these
community-level processes to affect poverty?
Community Characteristics
•Structural composition
%U
%Professional
%HS grads
%Mfg
%Single FH households
ghetto (>40% poverty)
Macro-economy
Rural
•Social Organization/
Institutional Influences
•Cultural Processes
Policies
Individual characteristics
Age
Education
Gender
Occupation
Marital Status
# children
Employment status
Employment
process
Marital
Process
Family
Formation
Process
Public
Assistance
Process
Poverty
Status
New Rural Poverty
Research Initiatives
multi-method studies in rural
places of low-income family, social-safety-net
and work dynamics: a “multi-rural-community
study of poverty and inequality”
Long-term
Policy
experiments in diverse rural places
“Musical Chairs” Hypothesis
 Our
economic system is a game of musical
chairs: no matter how much we increase
people’s agility and speed in getting into a
seat, there will never be enough chairs for
people to sit in.
 The implication is that we need to increase
the number of chairs and/or change the
rules so everybody doesn’t need a seat to live
well.
Implications for Rural Poverty
Research
 Researchers
have spent a lot of time trying
to show that there are fewer chairs in rural
areas.
 We need to spend more effort figuring out


how communities in urban and rural places can
build more chairs, and
how national policy can be changed so people
can get by when they can’t find a chair.
“Think of every piece of research
you do as a political activity.
Research should move the
conversation, not just inform it”
(Stauber)
Rural Policy Research Institute
Rural Poverty Research Center
www.rprconline.org
Core funding for RPRC is provided by the
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center is one of three
Area Poverty Research Centers funded by ASPE/HHS
www.rprconline.org