Poverty and Place: A Critical Review of Rural Poverty Literature

Poverty rates are highest in the most urban and most rural areas of the United States, and are higher in non-metropolitan (nonmetro) than metropolitan (metro) areas, yet rural poverty remains relatively obscured from mainstream political and popular attention. This fact has motivated considerable research by rural social scientists on the relationship between poverty and place generally, and rural-urban differences in poverty, in particular. We provide a critical review of the literature on rural poverty, paying particular attention to methodogical and statistical challenges facing quantitative analyses. This body of research confirms the higher prevalence of poverty in nonmetro areas, and finds that while both compositional (individual) and contextual (structural) factors are at play, a complete explanation remains elusive. We note endogenous membership, omitted variable, and other challenges facing researchers, and conclude with suggestions for further research. INTRODUCTION Three striking regularities characterize the way that poverty is distributed across the American landscape. First, high poverty counties are geographically concentrated: counties with poverty rates of 20 percent or more are concentrated in the Black Belt and Mississippi Delta in the south, in Appalachia, the lower Rio Grande Valley and “Indian Country” (counties containing Indian Reservations) in the southwest and Great Plains (see Map 1). Second, countylevel poverty rates vary across the rural-urban continuum. As can be seen from Figure 2, poverty rates are lowest in the suburbs (the fringe counties of large metropolitan areas) and