Policy
Shawn Poynter / There Is More Work To Be Done
Shawn Poynter / There Is More Work To Be Done
Renewed Attention on Poverty in the U.S.
A renewed focus on the issue of poverty in the United States was highlighted by the release of Speaker Paul Ryan’s anti-poverty plan titled “A Better Way.” While the nation has generally emerged from the Great Recession, there are still millions of Americans in poverty, and many of those live in rural areas. According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the rural poverty rate remains higher than the U.S. poverty rate.
A renewed focus on the issue of poverty in the United States was highlighted by the release of Speaker Paul Ryan’s anti-poverty plan titled “A Better Way.” While the nation has generally emerged from the Great Recession, there are still millions of Americans in poverty, and many of those live in rural areas. According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the rural poverty rate remains higher than the U.S. poverty rate.
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While poverty rates have generally been on the decline, an increasing number of rural communities are experiencing persistently high poverty rates. These areas are often isolated geographically, lack resources and economic opportunities, and suffer from decades of disinvestment. Often forgotten or hidden from mainstream America, these areas and populations have had double-digit poverty rates for decades. Persistently poor counties are those with poverty rates of 20 percent or more in 1990, 2000, and 2010. There were 429 of these persistently poor counties in 2010. Fully 86 percent of them had entirely rural populations. Overall, more than 21 million people live in persistent-poverty counties. Nearly 60 percent of them are racial and ethnic minorities, and the median household income is $31,581, more than 40 percent below the national median. The persistence of poverty is most evident within several predominately rural regions and populations such as Central Appalachia, the Lower Mississippi Delta, the southern Black Belt, the colonias region along the U.S.-Mexico border, Native American lands, and migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
For more information about Speaker Ryan’s anti-poverty plan and Democratic responses, see links below.