Rural Poverty in the United States treats rural poverty as a uniquely important subject and set of issues. We provide a broad and multifaceted overview of the causes, consequences, and forms of rural poverty in the United States. The scope and intensity of poverty experienced by rural people are often overlooked by the public, scholars, and policy makers, yet it persists as an enduring social problem. In this book we address serious conceptual and empirical issues that are distinctive to rural poverty and that make it unique when compared to other forms of U.S. poverty, including poverty in urban and suburban areas. We include authors from multiple disciplines, including sociology, demography, economics, law, political science, public health, and education. Together this multidisciplinary group of scholars describe, interrogate, and problematize rural poverty from a variety of angles and topics.
We move thematically from more general understandings of rural poverty and its roots, forms, and impacts, to discussions of measuring it and explaining its causes, to more in-depth explorations of specific aspects of rural poverty and its effects on and interactions with particular social groups and social institutions. This enables us to first set the context and introduce the reader to the main issues and concepts and to describe the scope and depth of the problem of rural poverty. After this introduction to the big picture of rural poverty, we move on to in-depth explorations of the populations affected by rural poverty, the social structures that keep it in place, and the processes that reproduce it. We conclude by discussing possible solutions to rural poverty and its impacts and provide an understanding of the complexities inherent in addressing rural poverty from economic and policy perspectives.
Part I introduces the reader to the geography and demography of rural America. Chapter 1 describes the diversity of rural America itself, including the various types of places it includes and the populations who live in rural America. Chapter 2 then puts rural poverty in historical context, explaining both the variation in rural poverty rates over time and its concentration and persistence. In this section we familiarize the reader with the poor populations of rural America and the types of rural American communities where poverty is concentrated, providing an overview of who the poor are and where poverty is found in rural areas of the United States.
Part II explores key concepts and issues vital to understanding rural poverty, focusing on measuring and explaining rural poverty. Chapter 3 introduces the reader to the concept of poverty in detail, exploring different definitions and measurements of poverty and the contexts in which they are used. Chapter 4 goes into depth on how to understand and explain poverty, exploring theoretical understandings and the multiple dimensions of causes and consequences of rural poverty in the U.S. context. These chapters set the stage for the rest of the book by ensuring that the reader fully understands what poverty is and why it occurs in rural America.
Part III looks in more depth at the people affected by rural poverty, with examinations of vulnerable rural populations. Chapter 5 focuses on gender roles and gender relations in rural areas, examining the interplay of gender with rural poverty, and women’s vulnerability to it due to both family and labor market structures. Chapter 6 looks at racial and ethnic minorities in rural areas, whose poverty rates tend to be higher than white populations due to legacies of slavery, racism, and racialized oppression. Chapter 7 investigates these issues in further depth as they pertain to immigration and the experiences of new immigrant groups, exploring the reasons for high poverty rates among rural immigrant groups.
Part IV focuses on community and social institutions affected by rural poverty. Chapter 8 looks at the roles of symbolic capital in structuring rural life, illustrating the ways in which social, cultural, human, and moral capital aid or hinder the rural poor in their daily struggles to survive. Chapter 9 focuses on old and new economies, tracing economic and labor market trends in rural America and their implications for poverty. Chapter 10 focuses on food, hunger, and homelessness and explores the intertwined conditions of food and housing insecurity for the rural poor. Chapter 11 looks in depth at the environment and health, exploring these issues from an environmental justice perspective as well as looking at access to health care for the rural poor. Chapter 12 looks at the roles of education and information in perpetuating and alleviating rural poverty.
Overviews of topics in parts III and IV are paired with brief case studies written by separate authors that illustrate the realities of the issues being discussed. The case studies help to illustrate the diverse array of causes, consequences, and faces of rural poverty across the United States. This combination of macro and micro and quantitative and qualitative studies from a variety of disciplines enables us to capture both the breadth and the depth of issues facing poor rural places and people and to showcase the richness of scholarship and knowledge from across different fields of study concerning rural poverty in the United States.
Finally, part V looks at programs, policy, and politics. Chapter 14 describes the safety net in rural areas, illustrating the ways in which the rural poor are both served and underserved by U.S. social service programs. Chapter 15 focuses on economic development and its potential for alleviating rural poverty. Chapter 16, the concluding chapter, addresses politics and policy as it affects the rural poor in the United States, exploring both opportunities and barriers to rural-focused policy and political participation.
Overall, the chapters come together to provide a comprehensive understanding of rural poverty. But why does rural poverty need its own volume? The answer isn’t simply that the experience of rural poverty is distinct from the much more studied urban forms. Rural poverty is a persistent social problem that affects significant numbers of Americans. U.S. rural poverty has been persistently high and rising throughout most of the early twenty-first century, whereas metropolitan poverty (in cities and suburbs) is on the decline and consistently lower. Since America’s founding, its poorest people have disproportionately lived in rural areas. They also are disproportionately ethnic minorities, and they usually suffer poverty rates considerably higher than the national average. Rural poverty, although less visible and threatening to many than urban poverty, remains a significant problem for our nation, and one that must be understood as having distinct causes and effects on individuals and families. As this volume illustrates, the depth, breadth, and persistence of rural poverty in the United States warrant it being treated as an important social issue whose causes and solutions must be looked at independently from other social problems.
What qualifies a rural American as poor? Why are some regions in rural America persistently poor? Why are their economies quicker to recess and slower to recover? What is the nature of rural poverty versus metropolitan poverty? And what approaches—economic, political, or private—might help to develop rural economies and relieve rural poverty? These are some of the questions we aim to answer. In this endeavor we have called upon some of the nation’s foremost scholars of rural America and rural poverty. It is our hope that this text will help both those who have been interested in rural poverty for decades and those who are new to the topic to begin to understand and address the many different issues that surround rural poverty, poor rural communities, and poor rural individuals and families.