Rural poverty rate declines, while family income grows

摘要

The poverty rate for rural persons declined from 1997 to 1998, and rural median family income rose in 1998. The family income of persons in poor families declined considerably, while it grew or changed little for persons in the higher income groups.A sizable share of the rural poor families had at least one worker. Poor rural workers often worked part-time, tended to live in female-headed families, and seldom had more than a high school education. Rural working poor families relied more on benefits from assistance programs and less on family earnings income than working nonpoor families. In 1998, the rural poverty rate was 14.3 percent, down 1.5 percentage points from the 1997 level. The rural poverty rate exceeded the urban poverty rate by 2 percentage points (see box, "How Is Poverty Determined?"). In all, 7,480,000 rural persons lived in poverty. In addition to having a larger share of persons living below the poverty line, rural areas had a larger share of persons living close to the povertyline--11 percent of rural residents fell between 100-150 percent of the poverty line, compared with only 8 percent of urban residents. People in this income category risk falling into poverty should a family crisis or economic downturn occur. At the high end of the income distribution, only 16 percent of rural residents' incomes exceeded 500 percent of the poverty threshold, compared with 28 percent of urban dwellers (fig. 1; app. table 8).