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In 2010, 16.5 percent of the population, or nearly 7.9 million people, living in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas were poor. This poverty rate is not significantly different than the 2009 poverty rate (16.6 percent). The metropolitan (metro) area poverty rate increased. It was 14.9 percent in 2010, up 1 percentage point from the 2009 poverty rate (13.9 percent). See How Is Poverty Defined? for more information. The increase in the metro poverty rate reduced the gap between nonmetro and metro poverty rates from 2.7 percentage points in 2009 to 1.6 percentage points in 2010.
The higher incidence of nonmetro poverty relative to metro poverty has existed since the 1960s when poverty rates were first officially recorded. In the 1980s, average poverty rates were 4.5 percentage points higher in nonmetro areas than in metro areas; in the 1990s, the average difference was 2.6 percentage points; from 2000 to 2009, the average difference was 2.7 percentage points. The difference in 2010 (1.6 percentage points) is the smallest on record and is only the second time since 1959 that the nonmetro/metro poverty rate gap has fallen below 2 percentage points (it was 1.8 in 1994).
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During the 1990s, the nonmetro poverty rate declined
fairly steadily from a high of 17.2 percent in 1993 to
a record-low rate of 13.4 percent in 2000. The decline
in poverty during the 1990s was mirrored by growth in
the economy overall. Between 1993 and 2000, the economy
grew by 4 percent per year, significantly higher than
the average growth rate of 2.7 percent during the 20 years
prior to 1993. Nonmetro poverty rose during the 2001 recession
to 14.2 percent where it remained for 3 consecutive
years before increasing once again. The average nonmetro
poverty rate from 2004 to 2008 was 15.1 percent.
The nonmetro poverty rate grew by 1.5 percentage points from 2008 (15.1 percent) to 2009 (16.6 percent), reaching its highest rate since 1993 when it was 17.2 percent. Similar to the 2009 rate, the 2010 nonmetro poverty rate was 16.5 percent. This indicates that due to the most recent economic downturn, an additional .6 million nonmetro residents fell below the poverty line from 2008 to 2010.
Regional Patterns
While the overall rate of nonmetro poverty is higher than metro poverty, the difference in nonmetro and metro poverty rates varies significantly across regions. In 2010, nonmetro and metro poverty rates were most alike in the Northeast and the Midwest. In the Northeast, with approximately 11.8 percent of the nonmetro population, the nonmetro poverty rate was 12.9 percent while the rate for the metro population was 12.8 percent. In the Midwest, the metro poverty rate (14.1 percent) was higher than the nonmetro rate (13 percent).
The nonmetro and metro poverty rate gap for the South has historically been the largest. This trend continued in 2010 (3.4 percentage points), but with a 2.1 percentage point decrease from 2009 (when the nonmetro-metro gap was 5.5 percentage points). The difference in poverty rates in the South is particularly important for the overall nonmetro poverty rates because an estimated 42.4 percent of the nonmetro population lived in this region in 2010.
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High-Poverty Counties
Despite the overall improvement in the nonmetro poverty
rate during the 1990s, over 400 nonmetro counties (out
of a total of 2,308 nonmetro counties, based on 1993 metro-nonmetro
definitions) had poverty rates of 20 percent or more in
2000 (the 2000 Census is the latest available county-level data on poverty by race), well above the nonmetro average. For the most part,
these areas of high poverty
are of long standing, with conditions stemming from a
complex of social and economic factors rather than from
personal events, such as temporary job layoffs or loss
of a spouse.
Of the 442 nonmetro counties classified as high-poverty
counties in 2000 (based on 1999 income), three-fourths
reflect the low income of their racial and ethnic minorities
and are classified as Black,
Hispanic,
or Native
American high-poverty counties. In these counties,
either a majority of the poor are Black, Hispanic, or
Native American, or it is only the high incidence of poverty
among these minority groups that brings the county's overall
rate above 20 percent.
Of the remaining fourth of high-poverty counties, most
(91 counties) are located in the Southern
Highlands of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and
parts of Missouri and Oklahoma. In these areas, the poor
are predominantly non-Hispanic Whites. The other
27 high-poverty counties are neither minority nor Southern Highlands.
They include thinly settled farming areas in the northern
Great Plains, where annual income levels vary widely depending
on wheat and cattle prices and output, as well as the only two
high-poverty counties where Asians account for over half
of the poor.
For details about this classification, see High-Poverty Counties (including analysis
of the particular county types).
Persistence of Poverty
An important dimension of poverty is time. An area that
has a high level of poverty this year, but not next year,
is likely better off than an area that has a high level
of poverty in both years. To shed light on this
aspect of poverty, ERS has defined counties as being persistently
poor if 20 percent or more of their populations were living
in poverty over the last 30 years (measured by the 1970,
1980, 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses). Using this definition, there
were 386 persistently poor counties
in the United States (comprising 12 percent of all U.S.
counties and 4 percent of the U.S. population in 2000). To download the
persistent-poverty code and other county codes, see 2004
County Typology Codes.
The large majority (340 of 386) of the persistent-poverty
counties are nonmetro counties. About 4 percent of
metro counties, 13 percent of micropolitan counties
(the more urbanized nonmetro counties), and 18 percent
of noncore, nonmetro counties (the most rural of nonmetro
counties) were persistent-poverty counties. (See New
Definitions in 2003 for definitions of metro, micro,
and noncore.) Persistent poverty also demonstrates a strong
regional pattern. There are no persistent-poverty counties
in the Northeast and only 60 nonmetro persistent-poverty
counties in the Midwest and West. The remaining 280 nonmetro
persistent-poverty counties are in the South, comprising
just over 25 percent of the total Southern nonmetro population.
County Types
Metro counties are commonly characterized as densely
populated central cities and suburbs, and nonmetro counties
as sparsely populated small towns and open countryside.
This distinction oversimplifies the many differences across
metro and nonmetro areas. Some metro counties have relatively
small populations and are adjacent to rural areas, and
some nonmetro counties contain urban areas but still qualify
as nonmetro. A more comprehensive classification—separating
metro areas into highly and less-urbanized counties (using
metro area population as cutoffs) and categorizing nonmetro
areas by degree of urbanization and adjacency to metro
areas—reveals important differences in poverty.
For more details on the county classification, see 2003
Rural-Urban Continuum Codes.
The poverty rate is the highest in the completely rural
non-adjacent counties (16.8 percent) and lowest in the
largest metro areas (11.5 percent). Persistent poverty
and degree of rurality are also linked. Nearly 28 percent
of the people living in completely rural counties live
in persistent-poverty counties. In contrast, 7.5 percent
of the people living in the most urban nonmetro areas
live in persistent poverty counties.
How Is Poverty Defined?
Any individual with total income less than an amount deemed to be sufficient to purchase basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, and other essential goods and services is classified as poor. (For details, see "How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty.") The amount of income necessary to purchase these basic needs is the poverty line or threshold and is set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The 2009 poverty line for an individual under 65 years of age is $11,161. The poverty line for a three-person family with one child and two adults is $17,268. For a family with two adults and three children the poverty line is $25,603. For a complete list of poverty lines by size of family and number of children, see the U.S. Census Bureau's tables of Poverty Thresholds.) Income includes cash income (pretax income and cash welfare assistance), but excludes in-kind welfare assistance, such as food stamps and Medicaid. Poverty thresholds are set for families by size and composition, and they are updated annually to correct for inflation.
Metro-nonmetro comparisons of poverty rates pose some difficult measurement issues that are worth bearing in mind. As one example, U.S. poverty rates do not make any adjustments for differences in cost of living across areas. If it is assumed that the cost of purchasing basic needs is cheaper in nonmetro areas, then the nonmetro poverty rate would be lower. There are many other examples though, and the effect they would have on the area poverty rates go in either direction. For example, the poverty thresholds do not account for the possibility that basic needs will differ across areas. Transportation to work in nonmetro areas may be much more expensive than in metro areas where access to public transit is greater. Similarly, the measure of poverty does not account for access to other "public goods" such as health care, schooling, or communication networks, nor "public bads" such as noise and air pollution, which also differ systematically across metro and nonmetro areas. |
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