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People Left Behind: Transitions of the Rural Poor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2017

Joseph J. Molnar
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, and the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Auburn University
Greg Traxler
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, and the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Auburn University

Abstract

Compared to their urban counterparts, the rural poor are more likely to be employed, more apt to be members of married-couple families, less likely to be children, less likely to be minority, and more likely to have assets but a negative income. This paper examines poverty rates and factors that affect mobility in and out of poverty among major categories of the rural poor. Particular attention is paid to farm workers and the rural farm population in the South. It endeavors to identify both structural conditions that perpetuate rural poverty and government interventions that ameliorate human suffering and break the cycle of poverty reproduction.

Type
Invited Papers and Discussions
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 1991

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