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_450px.png?v=457.5 "Medical benefits are largest source of government transfers in nonmetro and metro areas")
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Medical benefits are the single largest transfer payment category in both nonmetro and metro areas. In 1978, medical benefits accounted for 18.9 percent of all nonmetro transfer payments (the second largest category) and by 2011 these had risen to 41.7 percent (the largest category) of all nonmetro transfer payments. Similarly, in metro areas, medical benefits increased from 22.7 percent of all transfer payments in 1978 to 42.1 percent of payments in 2011. Overall, between 1978 and 2011, nonmetro transfer payments for medical benefits increased 581.5 percent, compared with 498.9 percent in metro areas. Some of the increase in transfer payments for medical benefits can be attributed to legislation expanding health insurance to children in working families through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). However, the rising cost of health care, which has far outpaced the overall rate of inflation, is a major source of this increase. This chart is from the Rural Poverty & Well-Being topic page on the ERS website, updated November 2012.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Nonmetro high-poverty areas—counties with a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher—tend to be clustered into groups of contiguous counties that reflect distinct regional concentrations. High levels of nonmetro poverty are pervasive in the South, particularly in the Cotton Belt, Southern Appalachia, the Rio Grande, and the Mississippi Delta. Poverty rates are typically highest at the cores of these high-poverty clusters and then taper off gradually toward the edges. There were 193 nonmetro counties newly defined as high poverty in 2006-10. Most of the new nonmetro high-poverty counties are adjacent to previously existing high-poverty clusters. Findings also reveal an emerging nonmetro high-poverty region in the Pacific Northwest and a more dispersed pattern of new high-poverty counties elsewhere in the West and the Midwest. This suggests that not only has the incidence of concentrated nonmetro poverty increased over the last decade but that it has also become more widespread. This map is found in the December 2012 Amber Waves magazine.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Government transfer payments comprise a large share of personal income for both nonmetro and metro residents. In 2011, transfer payments to individuals accounted for 24.8 percent of total personal income in nonmetro areas and 16.3 percent in metro areas. Per capita in 2011, nonmetro residents received more government transfers than metro residents: $8,236 vs. $7,022. Since 1978, nonmetro per capita transfer payments (adjusted for inflation) have risen faster than payments in metro areas. Most of this increase comes from the rising cost of government programs that provide medical benefits, such as Medicare and Medicaid. Because nonmetro areas have an older population and a higher proportion of persons with disabilities than metro areas, nonmetro areas receive more transfer payments. Between 2010 and 2011, per capita transfer payments fell, primarily due to a decline in unemployment insurance compensation, which fell 25 percent in both metro and nonmetro areas as benefits expired. This chart is found in the Rural Poverty & Well-being topic page on the ERS website, updated November 2012.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Government transfer payments (such as medical benefits, retirement and disability insurance, and nutrition assistance programs) comprise a large share of personal income for both nonmetro and metro residents. Transfer payments to individuals accounted for 25.6 percent of total nonmetro personal income and 16.8 percent of metro personal income, in 2010. Of the $2.2 trillion in Federal, State, and local government personal transfer payments to individuals in 2010, $415 billion went to nonmetro residents and $1.8 trillion went to metro residents. The counties with the highest percentage of total income from government transfer payments in 2010 were concentrated in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta. The top three nonmetro counties with the highest percentage of total income from government transfer payments were located in eastern coal fields of Kentucky. These counties have high levels of disability payments along with very high unemployment and poverty rates. This chart is from the Rural Poverty & Well-Being topic page on the ERS website.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Nationally, the share of Americans living below the poverty threshold increased from 12.4 percent in 2000 to 13.8 percent in 2006-10. But in nearly one-quarter (762) of U.S. counties, the poverty rate increased by 30 percent or more, while another 878 counties saw no change or experienced declining poverty. Of the counties that had increases of 30 percent or more, 58 percent were in rural areas. Increases in the poverty rate were often highest in regions that suffered the largest increases in unemployment rates during the 2007-09 recession. Many were manufacturing-dependent counties located in the Great Lakes and Southern Highland regions. This chart appeared in the June 2012 issue of Amber Waves magazine.
_450px.png?v=457.5 "A growing number of families have received the earned income tax credit since its creation")
Monday, July 9, 2012
The earned income tax credit (EITC) was enacted in 1975 to reduce the burden of Social Security taxes on low-income workers and to encourage them to seek employment rather than welfare benefits. The amount of the credit depends upon the number of qualifying children in the household and the level of earned and adjusted gross income. Originally, the credit was limited to a maximum of $400 per year for a qualifying household, but subsequent legislation expanded the basic credit and provided larger credits for families with two or more children. In 2008, the EITC provided an estimated $51.5 billion to nearly 25 million low-income workers and their families, for an average of $2,063 per recipient. Since rural households have historically had higher poverty rates than urban households, rural taxpayers benefit disproportionately from programs targeting low-income workers, such as the EITC. This chart appeared in "Rural America Benefits from Expanded Use of the Federal Tax Code for Income Support" in the June 2011 issue of ERS's Amber Waves magazine.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Real nonfarm earnings per job were essentially unchanged in 2009. Nonfarm earnings make up 96 percent of total farm and nonfarm earnings (from wages, salaries, and self-employment) in nonmetro counties and fully 99.6 percent of earnings in metro counties. The trend in average nonfarm earnings per job in metro versus nonmetro areas is one measure of the changing urban-rural wage gap. In 2009, the average metro job paid $53,373 while the average job in a nonmetro county paid $36,920. Over the past 30 years, average metro earnings per job have grown faster than nonmetro earnings per job. As a result, average nonmetro earnings per job were equal to 69 percent of the metro average in 2009, compared with 81 percent in the late 1970s. This gap, however, appears to have narrowed in the wake of the 2001 recession, and also during the 2007-09 recession. This chart is found in the Rural Poverty & Well-being topic on the ERS website, updated May 27, 2012.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Newly released data show that every State in the U.S. saw an increase in poverty since the 2000 Census. Increases were highest for Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, each registering 2010 poverty rates more than 6 points higher than in 2000. Mississippi had the highest poverty rate in 2010, and was the only State to have an average poverty rate over 20 percent. This 2010 State poverty map is found in the data product 2010 County-Level Poverty Rates on the ERS website, updated December 2, 2011. State poverty rates for 2010 and previous years are found in the State Fact Sheets.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Areas with a high incidence of poverty often reflect the low income of their racial/ethnic minorities. Nonmetro non-Hispanic Blacks had the highest incidence of poverty in 2010, at 32.9 percent (32.2 percent in 2009). The 2010 poverty rate for nonmetro Hispanics was 29.5 percent, which is 1.7 percentage points higher than in 2009. Both non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic poverty rates for 2010 were more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic Whites (13.1 percent), which was also the case in 2009. The high rate of poverty for Hispanics is noteworthy as their share of the nonmetro population has been increasing faster than other racial/ethnic groups, from less than 3 percent in 1990 to 7.4 percent in 2010. This chart is found in the Poverty Demographics chapter of the Rural Income, Poverty, and Welfare briefing room on the ERS website, updated September 17, 2011.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The 2007-09 recession was particularly severe in the depth of poverty it engendered. The number of nonmetro residents living in poverty increased more than 8 percent between 2007 and 2009 to 8.1 million (a 16.6-percent poverty rate). Of these, an estimated 3.3 million (6.7 percent of the nonmetro population) were in deep poverty in 2009, up nearly 13 percent from 2007. The number of nonmetro residents living in poverty rose markedly in the previous two recessions as well (as measured by 1989-91 and 2000-02 annual data). Yet, the change in the deep poverty count was substantially higher during the 2007-09 recession. This chart appeared in the June 2011 issue of Amber Waves magazine.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
About 17 percent of all nonelderly individuals nationwide lack health insurance. Coverage rates are comparable for metro and nonmetro residents. (Because Medicare coverage starts at age 65, only a very small share of the elderly is uninsured.) Nonmetro coverage was lower as recently as the 1990s, and individuals in the more remote (noncore) counties still have lower coverage than urban residents. However, regional location appears to have more impact than rurality, with the Northeast and Midwest having consistently higher rates of health insurance coverage than the South and the West. This chart appeared in the September 2009 issue of Amber Waves.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The 2006 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, asked adults about the incidence of chronic disease, along with various health risk factors. Adults in nonmetro households reported higher rates of hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and stroke than adults in households in large metro areas (more than 1 million residents). Risky individual behaviors such as smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, and alcohol use compromise health. Higher shares of adults in nonmetro households were current smokers, obese, or inactive, according to the 2006 NHIS, but nonmetro adults had a lower rate of regular use of alcohol. This chart appeared in the June 2010 issue of Amber Waves magazine.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The number of nonmetro residents living in poverty increased more than 8 percent between 2007 and 2009 to 8.1 million (a 16.6-percent poverty rate). Of these, an estimated 3.3 million (6.7 percent of the nonmetro population) were in deep poverty in 2009, up nearly 13 percent from 2007. The number of nonmetro residents living in poverty rose markedly in the previous two recessions as well (as measured by 1989-91 and 2000-02 annual data). Yet, the change in the deep poverty count was substantially higher during the 2007-09 recession. The number of nonmetro children in poverty also increased in all three recessionary periods. However, the number of nonmetro children in deep poverty decreased in the previous two recessions, while it increased by 9 percent from 2007 to 2009. In comparison, the number of moderately poor (50 to 99 percent of the Federal poverty threshold) nonmetro children increased by 3.3 percent. This chart appeared in the June 2011 issue of Amber Waves magazine.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) allows a rebate to the taxpayer of any balance after the credit is applied against the tax owed to the IRS. The impact of the EITC on the rural poor is indicated in part by the geographic distribution and share of tax return filers receiving the credit. The percentage of rural taxpayers who received the EITC in 2007 was greatest in the South, where a large percentage of the Nation's rural poor has historically resided. The median rate of the EITC receipt for Southern States is 21.2 percent of rural households that filed a tax return. This compares with 13 percent of rural households in Northeastern States and 15 percent in the Midwest and the West. These differences reflect higher average income levels in rural areas outside of the South, particularly in the Northeast. This map appeared in the ERS bulletin, Federal Tax Policies and Low-Income Rural Households, EIB-76, May 2011.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Historically, poverty grows during recessionary periods as a result of job losses, difficulty finding new work, and reductions in work hours or wages. This is evident in both nonmetro and metro poverty rates, which follow the same trends as unemployment over time. The dramatic increase in unemployment during the 2007-09 recession is tied to growth in the number of nonmetro residents living in poverty. In 2009, the nonmetro unemployment rate was 9.0 percent, which represents a 3.4-point increase from 2008. This is the largest annual increase in unemployment in more than 35 years. The percent of the population living in nonmetro areas that were poor in 2009 was 16.6 percent, compared with 15.1 percent in 2008. This is the most significant year-to-year increase in nonmetro poverty since the early 1980s recession. This chart is from the December 2010 issue of Amber Waves.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
About one in four (23.5 percent) rural children in the United States were poor in 2016, compared to about one in five (20.5 percent) of urban children. Forty-one counties in the U.S. had child poverty rates of 50 percent or higher on average between 2012 and 2016. Thirty-eight of these counties were rural (nonmetro) counties, heavily clustered in the South (31 out of 38). The rural counties with the highest child poverty rates were Mellette County, South Dakota (70.9 percent); Issaquena County, Mississippi (68.7 percent); and East Carroll Parish, Louisiana (68.4 percent). Thirteen of the rural counties with child poverty rates of 50 percent or higher were in Mississippi—mainly along the Mississippi Delta region where child poverty rates have been persistently high, particularly among the black or African American child population. This chart appears in the ERS topic page for Rural Poverty & Well-being, updated April 2018.