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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Rural Poverty

How rural poverty is changing: Your fate is increasingly tied to your town, By Lydia DePillis, August 7, 2014, Washington Post: “The town of Las Animas takes about five minutes to drive through when the one stoplight is blinking yellow, as usual. It’s easy to miss but hard to escape. Just ask Frank Martinez. Martinez doesn’t remember having a deprived childhood. His mom was a home care nurse and his dad was disabled from a workplace injury, but he and his five siblings always had what they needed, even if they didn’t wear the latest Nikes to school. That childhood was cut short, however, when he fathered his first child at 16, married another girl when he was 18, and had three more kids before she left and his grandparents took them in…”