Poverty in Rural America: What do we know and what do we need to know

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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.

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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

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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

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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)

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Persistent Poverty CountiesCounties with poverty
rates gt20 in 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999
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Persistent Poverty DynamicsPersistent 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

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Persistent Poverty DynamicsPersistent Poverty
Leavers
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Percent of Counties in each Urban Influence
Category that Left Persistent Poverty Status
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High Poverty Census Tracts

• Poverty rates of 30 or more in 1990
• 7,030 tracts 11.7 percent of all tracts
• Geographically dispersed
• ERS Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes
• High poverty most prevalent in core area tracts
  and remote rural areas

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High Poverty Census Tracts, 1990
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Percent of Tracts in eachRUCA Code in High
Poverty
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Poverty Rates by RUCA Code
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Alternative Rural Urban Continuum Central City
to Remote Rural County
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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

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What do we know about

• rural poverty and its causes?
• reducing rural poverty
• policies to reduce poverty?

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Articles published in Rural Sociology onpoverty
and/or welfare receipt, 1936-2003
RSS Poverty Taskforce Volume 1993
Gene Summers RSS Presidential Address 1991
The People Left Behind 1967
Welfare Reform 1996
Journal first published at the end of the
depression
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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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Contextual Studies of Rural PovertyEstimates of
Rural Effect
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Contextual Studies of Rural PovertyEffects of
Community Characteristics
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Contextual Studies of Rural PovertyRural
Interactions
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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

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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

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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

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What Have We Learned About Policy Impacts?

• Quasi-Experimental Research on welfare policy
  changes in 1990s (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

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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

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Toward a Rural Poverty Research Agenda

• Good research requires passion, rigor, and a
  supportive community
• Passion focuses research on the right questions
• Rigor supports getting the right answers
• Theoretical and Methodological Challenges
• Data Challenges
• A community of scholars and practitioners keeps
  the passion alive and enforces the rigor

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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

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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

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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

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RPRC Mentoring

• Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
• Rural Poverty Dissertation Fellowships
• Undergraduate Leadership Program
• Professional Development Travel Fund

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RPRC Dissemination

• Quarterly Newsletter Perspectives on Poverty,
  Policy and Place
• Working Paper Series
• Research Briefs
• RPRC UPDATE (quarterly email)
• RPRC website

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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?

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• Community Characteristics
• Structural composition
• U
• ProfessionalHS gradsMfgSingle FH
  householdsghetto (gt40 poverty)

Employment process
Marital Process
Poverty Status
Macro-economy
Rural

• Social Organization/
• Institutional Influences

Family Formation Process

• Cultural Processes

Policies
Individual characteristics Age Education Gender O
ccupation Marital Status children Employment
status
Public Assistance Process
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New Rural Poverty Research Initiatives

• Long-term 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
• Policy experiments in diverse rural places

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Musical Chairs Hypothesis

• Our economic system is a game of musical chairs
  no matter how much we increase peoples 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 doesnt need a seat to live well.

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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 cant find a chair.

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Think of every piece of research you do as a
political activity. Research should move the
conversation, not just inform it
(Stauber)
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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
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www.rprconline.org