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…”
Tag: Rural poverty
Rural Poverty
What’s the matter With Eastern Kentucky? By Annie Lowrey, June 26, 2014, New York Times: “There are many tough places in this country: the ghost cities of Detroit, Camden and Gary, the sunbaked misery of inland California and the isolated reservations where Native American communities were left to struggle. But in its persistent poverty, Eastern Kentucky — land of storybook hills and drawls — just might be the hardest place to live in the United States. Statistically speaking. The team at The Upshot, a Times news and data-analysis venture, compiled six basic metrics to give a picture of the quality and longevity of life in each county of the nation: educational attainment, household income, jobless rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity rate. Weighting each equally, six counties in eastern Kentucky’s coal country (Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie and Magoffin) rank among the bottom 10. Clay County, in dead last, might as well be in a different country. The median household income there is barely above the poverty line, at $22,296. . .”
Rural Poverty
USDA says poverty increasing in rural America, By Michael Rosmann, May 28, 2014, Farm and Ranch Guide: “Rural child poverty is at its highest level since the mid-1980s, according to two recently released USDA Reports: Rural America at a Glance, 2013 Edition and Rural Poverty & Well-being. Like the overall poverty rate, child poverty in nonmetropolitan (rural) areas of the US has historically been higher than in metropolitan (urban) areas. In 2012, rural child poverty increased to 26.7 percent – its highest level in nearly three decades – while the urban rate declined slightly to 20.9 percent. Definition of poverty. The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines poverty as less income than is necessary to purchase basic needs, which include food, shelter, clothing and other essential goods. . .”