Overcoming Persistent Poverty—And Sinking Into It Income Trends in Persistent-Poverty and Other High- Poverty Rural Counties, 1989-94

Post-1990 income and population trends in persistent-poverty and other high-poverty rural counties suggest that, in general, economic conditions are improving in those counties. Recent per capita income growth in the persistent-poverty counties was more than twice that in other rural counties. Improvements are concentrated in the East, while trends are mixed in the Southwest, the Ozarks, and the upper Midwest. Most high-poverty counties with predominantly Black poor experienced substantial income growth, while income declined in a substantial minority of high-poverty counties with high proportions of Hispanic and Native American poverty