This paper uses Panel Study of Income Dynamics data for 1989, 1994, and 1999 to examine why some U.S. households are asset poor; that is, why households have insufficient resources to invest in their future or to sustain household members at a basic level during times of economic disruption. The...

Persistent poverty is overwhelmingly rural and is very geographically concentrated. We have redefined the USDA ERS persistent poverty classification to include metropolitan counties meeting the 20 percent or higher poor criterion and we extend the time period through the 2000 Census. With this...

Research shows households are more likely to be poor in rural versus urban America. Does this phenomenon partly reflect that people who choose rural residence have unmeasured attributes related to human impoverishment? To address this, two models are estimated using Panel Study of Income...

Our main objective is to better understand how new residential patterns have reshaped patterns of poverty among America's growing Mexican-origin population. We use data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) to document recent changes in poverty rates among native-born and...

In the United States, low-income people are not evenly distributed across the rural-urban landscape. Does this phenomenon partly reflect that people who "choose" to live in rural areas have unmeasured attributes related to poverty? To address this question, I use data from nine waves of the...

The macroeconomy and social policies can have substantial influences on poverty in the United States. In this paper, I investigate whether these influences differ across metro and nonmetro areas. To do so, using a 16-year panel of state-level data, I estimate state and year fixed effects models...

Using ethnographic and interview data, this paper explores the impacts of economic strain and job loss on the construction and experience of masculinity, as well as the effects of threats to masculine identity on family stability in a rural American community. It looks at these issues...

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...

Was local job growth a significant determinant of poverty reduction between 1990 and 2000? This research takes advantage of newly available data and techniques to explore the job growth on tract-level poverty reduction. Spatial corrections to the model allow for more accurate identification of...