Discussion of poverty often focuses “on the ‘culture’ of poor urban residents,” says front page story in New York Times. “Almost forgotten is how many ways poverty plays out in America, and how much long-term poverty is a rural problem.” The bulk of persistently poor counties — 85 pct of the 353 counties with a poverty rate above 20 pct – are rural. The Times story centers on McDowell County in West Virginia, where the first food stamps were issued during the Kennedy administration and where the coal industry is dying.
The Times story says persistently poor rural counties “are clustered in distinct regions: Indian reservations in the West; Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; a band across the Deep South and along the Mississippi Delta with a majority black population; and Appalachia, largely white, which has supplied some of America’s iconic imagery of rural poverty since the Depression-era photos of Walker Evans.”