Rural and Urban Poverty Rates and the US Income Distribution

The US rural poverty rate has been consistently higher than the urban rate for several decades. One question might be the extent to which changes in the US income distribution impact the rural rate more significantly than the urban rate. Using annual 1985-2015 data and regressing both poverty rates on the national unemployment rate and the Gini coefficient resulted in the Gini being significant in the rural bit not the urban equation. This might suggest that income support programs are more beneficial in rural compared to urban communities