Rural poverty rate steady, as national rate rises

Erik Eckholm reports in today's New York Times that the national poverty rate has hit a 12-year high, jumping to 13.2% in 2008, up from from 12.5% in 2007. Eckholm's source, the U.S. Census Bureau report, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States 2008, also indicated a decline in employer-provided health coverage.

Eckholm does not mention this in the NYT story, but the report indicates the poverty rate "outside metropolitan areas" was statistically unchanged from 2007 to 2008. At 15.1%, that rate remains significantly higher than the national poverty rate. (See page 15 of report). The poverty rate jump for just those living inside metropolitan areas was from 11.9% (2007) to 12.9% (2008).

For details of income changes along the metropolitan/nonmetropolitan axis, see page 8 of the report; health insurance differentials are detailed on page 26.

Leveraging indigenous culture to better serve a rural population

Denise Grady reports in the health page of a recent edition of the New York Times about a clinic in rural Peru that has adapted its practices to better serve women. The dateline is Ayacucho, Peru, which in 1999 had a very high rate of death in childbirth, in part because very few women (only about 6%) chose to give birth in clinics. Most chose home births, apparently in order to avoid the Western norms practiced in clinics, where staff did not speak their language. Here's an excerpt that explains what has turned things around:

Working with local people, members of a nongovernmental group, Health Unlimited, changed delivery services at a clinic in the Santillana district. They made sure Quechua was spoken, let relatives stay and help, set up delivery rooms so that women could squat and made other changes based on local traditions.

As of 2007, about 83% of women are giving birth in the clinic.

For another good-news story about health care delivery in the mostly-rural developing world, click here.

Attention rural Wal-Mart shoppers

When a more-cruel-than-humorous website mocking Wal-Mart shoppers went viral last week, the sheer volume of visitors crashed the site's server. The premise of the site is simple: photographs of "out-of-shape, poorly dressed and otherwise awkward" Wal-Mart shoppers are posted on daily basis, along with biting commentary and visitor comments. The website is intended to be a comical gag, a humorous and entertaining look at people who, according to the website, "obviously don’t have mirrors."

The humor is not appreciated by everyone, however, including rural strategists who say that "the site goes out of its way to mock poor and rural patrons of the store, reinforcing stereotypes along the way." The website certainly smacks of classism, with the photos portraying the poor and rural as immoral, unfit, lazy, dirty, and uncivilized.

"American culture likes to single out people who appear to be different," said Tim Marema, vice president of the Whitesburg, Kentucky-based Center for Rural Strategies. "Whether it's a joke or not, all depends on which side of the camera you're on."

Furthering stereotypes can strengthen the rifts between rural, urban and suburban residents and, in the worst-case scenario, can affect the way some people are treated by government and industry, he said.

Interestingly, the site publishes only the state in which each photograph was taken, providing no additional geographic information. Since Wal-Mart stores are nearly identical inside, the notion that any given shopper is a rural resident is largely conjecture (a guy with a mullet? Must be rural! A couple in matching shirts emblazoned with the American Flag? Must be rural! A live goat walking down the frozen food aisle? Definitely must be rural!).

Another story of rural vulnerability in the developing world, this time from Africa

Jeffrey Gettleman reports in today's New York Times from Africa, under the headline, "Lush Land Dries up, Withering Kenya's Hopes." Here's a brief excerpt:

A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land.

The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy, agriculture and tourism, are especially imperiled.

The story does not use the word rural, but implicit is the fact that the part of Kenya suffering most is the part outside Nairobi. Unlike India--as explained in this post a few days ago--Kenya does not have a thriving knowledge/urban-based economy on which to lean in times like these.

The last Michigan state fair?

Apparently it just closed today. Read Mary M. Chapman's report in the New York Times. Here's the lede:

Since 1849, Michigan residents have attended the annual state fair, where urban, suburban and farm dwellers can pet Clydesdales, attend rock concerts and watch heifers being born. Barring last-minute support, however, Michigan’s State Fair, the nation’s oldest, held its last event when it ended its 11-day run Monday.

Although last year's fair lost $362,000, the chair of the fair's governing authority, Mark Gaffney, expressed optimism that a "private entity would create a redevelopment plan for the fairgrounds" to keep the fair open, suggesting the need for “more time.” Acknowledging the dominance of urban life in Michigan and echoing a sense of loss expressed by other Michigan residents about the demise of the fair, Gaffney said, "Kids here grow up in the city and never see a cow. ... Here, they not only can see a cow, they can milk it.”

Tiny-town government run amok

The dateline is Jericho, Arkansas, population 184, and the story is downright bizarre. Town's fire chief appears in traffic court to protest speeding citation. It is his second such appearance in the same day. Scuffle between fire chief and seven city police officers--that's right, seven--ensues. Fire chief is shot from behind by one of the officers.

While that's the episode that has brought tiny Jericho so much attention in the past week or so, it is perhaps not the most interesting aspect of what's been happening in Jericho. What is interesting to me is that a "city" of fewer than 200 persons has seven police officers. Indeed, it might raise an eyebrow or two that so small a population center has a police department at all. Apparently, Jericho's police department was established sometime in the 1990s, with a grant; previously, the city had relied on the Crittenden County Sheriff's office for public safety.

But the city's police department does not seem to have been established with public safety in mind. Rather, it was apparently established to generate revenue from traffic tickets. Its "success" in that endeavor has long been the source of tension between officers and residents. Referring to the fact that the town's last business recently closed, one former resident who said he moved from Jericho because the police harassment became unbearable is quoted as saying "You can't even buy a loaf of bread, but we've got seven police officers." Another told of getting a ticket for traveling 58 mph--in his driveway.

Also of interest is the fact that the fines associated with the numerous traffic tickets cannot be accounted for and, in fact, the city has recently defaulted on the loans and/or leases by which it purchased and possessed police cruisers and fire trucks. With all the attention that the late August schooting has brought to Jericho and these matters, the city's police chief has temporarily disbanded the force. The town judge has made void all pending citations and resigned her post.

With the police force and the traffic court out of commission for a while, the town's residents can--ironically--finally get some peace and quiet. It makes me wonder if an absence of checks and balance in small town government creates greater potential for abuses and greater challenges to uncovering them.

Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity?

My latest article in the publication pipeline is called, "Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity: Equal Protection, Child Poverty and Place." I wrote it for a "rural law" symposium issue of the Montana Law Review (see the related post here). The article represents a continuation of my engagement with rural sociology and geography, but in it my focus shifts to rural child poverty, which outpaces even rates among the general population. The abstract follows, and the full paper can be downloaded here:

This is the first in a series of articles that maps legal conceptions of (in)equality onto the socio-geographical concept of spatial inequality, with a view to generating legal remedies for those living in places marked by socioeconomic disadvantage. Written for a symposium on “rural law,” this article considers in particular whether the funding and delivery of government services at the county level in the state of Montana violate the state’s constitution because of the grossly disparate abilities among Montana counties to finance and provide such services. Pruitt’s analysis focuses on children as a particularly vulnerable and immobile population, many of whom are deprived of government services based on place of residence. Further, the article scrutinizes the provision of health and human services as a category of services to which Montana children experience great variations in access.

County governments in Montana are financed principally by local property tax revenue. Uneven development across the state, from one county to the next, consequently confers on individual counties vastly different capacities to provide services. Because of the lack of centralized funding for services such as public health and other human services, those who live in sparsely populated, relatively undeveloped and property-poor counties are least served by local government. At the same time, wealthy counties—which tend also to be more populous—have economies that are more diversified, property tax bases that are more substantial, and a correspondingly greater capacity to deliver services. More densely populated counties also face lower per capita costs for delivering services because they are better able to achieve economics of scale.

To illustrate these disparities, Pruitt discusses in detail the economic and demographic profiles of five Montana counties. These include Yellowstone County, home to Billings, the state’s largest city; fast-growing Gallatin County, which exemplifies rural gentrification and the rural resort phenomenon; Stillwater County, a sparsely populated nonmetropolitan county with significant mineral wealth; Big Horn County, a persistent poverty county with a majority American Indian population; and Wheatland County, a tiny county with a dwindling population and an agriculture-based economy.

The legal critique of this spatially and economically uneven landscape relies primarily on the 1972 Montana Constitution, which is among the most progressive state constitutions in the nation. In particular, Pruitt argues that the constitution’s equal protection and dignity clauses are violated by the county government funding scheme and its consequences. The Montana equal protection clause forbids discrimination based on “race, color, sex, culture, social origin or condition, or political or religious ideas.” Pruitt maintains that significant disparities in service provision, which occur arbitrarily across county lines, violate this equality guarantee. Pruitt’s second argument is for state provision of a minimal degree of services to children. 

Relying on the constitution’s dignity clause and the doctrine of parens patriae, Pruitt argues that children cannot live with dignity unless their fundamental needs are met. She asserts that the typical emphasis on autonomy with respect to the dignity right is misplaced with regard to children. For the child population, Pruitt maintains that a right to dignity should be grounded instead in their inherent dependency and vulnerability, thus imposing a duty on the state to provide children’s first-order needs when their parents cannot or do not do so. In addition to this analysis under the Montana Constitution, the article also challenges the orthodoxy of U.S. constitutional jurisprudence regarding poor people, public benefits, and equal protection.

Finally, Pruitt argues that Montana’s school funding scheme, which has been the subject of recent litigation, now represents a better model—albeit a still-imperfect one—for financing public services. This is because the school funding formula seeks to level the funding playing field by providing more state monies, along with federal funds that are somewhat similarly allocated, to school districts based on the presence of at-risk students. School districts with the highest percentages of at-risk students tend also to be the school districts with poorer property tax bases. By contrast, the scheme for financing county government results in a situation in which more affluent counties are better able to provide services to residents, while those living in the most rural and property-poor counties have access only to very limited health and human services. Financing so linked to the local scale thus aggravates and further entrenches spatial inequalities, an outcome that is in contrast to the school funding formula, which aims to achieve greater substantive equality by channeling money to the schools with the greatest need.

While this article analyzes spatial inequality in the context of a specific state and with respect to a particular type of government service, the capacity and significance of spatial inequality as a critique of legal equality guarantees is not so limited. The services that governments provide implicate a wide range of rights, and these rights may be violated if the services are not provided in an equitable manner. Pruitt thus calls for all branches and scales of government to be more attentive to the difference place makes to service delivery, in order to ensure more even and fair access.

Breathing life into an Illinois farm

An Illinois farm family, The Travises, are highlighted in an inspiring New York Times Magazine article, Field Report: Family Heirlooms:

Losing the family farm is a familiar story. Getting it back less so.

Once Marty Travis’s family was finally able to piece together its 179-year-old farm, buying back the homestead and its parcel of land that was sold by his grandmother and slated for developers, the intention was to rebuild the dilapidated buildings. But over the last decade, Marty and his wife, Kris, have restored not only the farmhouse but the farming community in Fairbury, Ill., as well.

The Travis family is harvesting obscure "oddball crops"--Galápagos tomatoes, ramps, radish-seed pods, Kickapoo beans, and Japanese hakurei turnips--which they sell to some of Chicago's best restaurants. Especially in high demand is Iroquois corn, a crop that Marty Travis revived from near extinction at the request of Chicago chef Rick Bayless.

The family also organized Stewards of the Land, "a group of 25 farm families who sell to the local grocery store and to Chicago restaurants." Interestingly, most of the Stewards of the Land are under 18, including Justin and Trent Kilgus, teenage brothers who are "earning about $40,000 through their new goat farm." The Travises' son Will, age 18, was recently made partner in the Travis family farm.

Marty Travis told the New York Times that the experience has been amazing, that "every community across the country could be doing this.”

Rural India lags as rest of nation surges

"Drought Puts Focus on Side of India Left Out of Progress" is a front-page headline in today's New York Times. That "left out" side, of course, is rural India, with an economy still largely based on agriculture and therefore particularly vulnerable to the whims of weather and climate change. The story focuses on the impact of the recent low rainfall monsoon season, which led to about half of rural districts being declared "drought zones." The following excerpt provides additional context.

Government officials are projecting that growth will reach or surpass 6 percent this year and approach 8 percent next year, almost the pace that established India as an emerging global economic power second only to China.

But the cautious optimism about the broader economy has been tempered by a historic summertime drought that has underscored the stubborn fact that many people are largely untouched by the country’s progress. India’s new economy may be based on software, services and high technology, but hundreds of millions of Indians still look to the sky for their livelihoods; more than half the country’s 1.1 billion people depend on agriculture for a living even though agriculture represents only about 17 percent of the total economy.

Whereas rural consumer spending had helped "buttress the national economy" as the global downturn began, the drought is now forcing government to subsidize agricultural inputs like seeds and diesel fuel.

Prime Minister Singh addressed the issue of rural development during the recent election campaign (see a post here). Thus far, however, his Congress Party government has failed to announce significant initiatives to help achieve greater prosperity for the rural poor. Critics say this represents a short-term fix rather than the sorts of long-term solutions--like taking on structural problems in the rural economy--that will yield greater return. One of those structural problems is low education levels in rural places, which mean that when farmers can no longer support themselves as farmers, they also do not have the skills to move into the service sector.

Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, T. Nanda Kumar, is quoted as saying that India can manage the immediate consequences of the drought, as it has in the past, because it has vast stores of food its populace. Another of his quotes, however, I find more troubling: “We can manage the drought. ... We have managed earlier droughts. But we need to move some people out of agriculture. I don’t think that a 17 percent share of G.D.P. and a 50 percent share of employment are viable in the long run.” Maybe not, but if he's advocating a move toward greater intensive production agriculture as part of a so-called "rural development" policy that further drives an urban migration juggernaut by creating urban jobs while eliminating rural agricultural ones, India would be following a path from which the developed world is now in slow retreat.

Read Jim Yardley's entire story here. Interestingly, the print edition of this story used two other headlines, both different from the one used in the online version. The front-page headline in the print edition was "Drought Puts Focus on a Side of India Untouched by Progress." The headline on the continuing page is the only one to use the word "rural": "Drought Puts Focus on Rural Side of India Untouched by Progress."

Meth's migration to the city

Methamphetamine has long been associated with rural places. It is not surprising, then, that a quick search of Google News found reports of numerous meth busts in rural locales last week, including raids at a mobile home near Darlington, FL (population 10,030), a home in Stacy, MN, (population 1,278), and another in Gulfport, MS (population 71,127).

Also making headlines recently are reports about a new method of meth production, the so-called "Shake-and-Bake" technique.

This is the new formula for methamphetamine: a two-liter soda bottle, a few handfuls of cold pills and some noxious chemicals. Shake the bottle and the volatile reaction produces one of the world's most addictive drugs.

***

[Now] drug users are making their own meth in small batches using a faster, cheaper and much simpler method with ingredients that can be carried in a knapsack and mixed on the run.

Traditional meth production requires "cooking" chemical ingredients over an open flame, which produces a malodorous stench. This leads producers to favor rural places, where the odors are less detectable. Now, with the tell-tale cooking odor of meth production largely eliminated by the new method, a producer no longer requires a physically isolated lab.

The new "Shake-and-Bake" recipe also lacks a key ingredient used in traditional meth production: anhydrous ammonia. This chemical, a commonly used farm fertilizer, is accessible to rural producers from farm storage tanks. The new method, however, replaces anhydrous ammonia with ammonium nitrate, a compound found in instant cold packs, available at any drug store.

Is meth's relationship with the rural coming to an end? If a producer no longer needs to visit a farm to gather ingredients or conceal the foul cooking odors in a physically isolated location, will the meth epidemic shift from small towns to big cities?

NPR reported today that "[o]ne meth lab found recently in Tulsa was in a stairwell of a state office building." The new technology makes meth production accessible to anyone with 10 square feet of privacy--a bathroom stall, the backseat of car, a studio apartment in a New York City high rise.

A meth lab explosion in Mobile, AL prompted Mobile Officer Christopher Levy to point out, "You know it's possible that it's not necessarily going to be isolated to rural areas, but it can also work its way into normal neighborhoods."

If meth moves from the country to the city, will rural America finally be able to shake its reputation as Methland? And would that be a good thing?

Just because the epidemic is moving into urban places, certainly does not mean that it is leaving rural places. It can't be overlooked that shaking a two-liter bottle in rural Tipton County, TN is just as easy as shaking a two-liter in San Francisco, CA. But, as the nation's attention shifts to meth production in cities, a net loss in resources may be the ultimate result for rural stakeholders. Indeed, as policy-makers turn to combat the meth epidemic in metropolitan areas, rural locales may lose their Methland reputation and, in turn, may simply be forgotten.

Putting young folks to work with stimulus funds in Arizona

Listen to this NPR marketplace report out of Coconino County, Arizona, population 126,087. A group there called Coconino Rural Environment Corps is making use of federal stimulus dollars to build and improve trails and maintain habitat in national forests and other public lands in and around the Grand Canyon. Many of those benefiting are in a demographic group hard hit by the recession, those aged 15-25. Here's an excerpt that quotes one of the crew supervisors regarding the local impact of the program:

So providing jobs and job training opportunities for that age group specifically helps stimulate the economy through their spending. And the side effects of that are the work that gets performed on public lands that help to enrich recreational experiences for tourists and hopefully thereby stimulating the tourist industry, which is a huge piece of the local economy.

Listen to Kai Ryssdal's full story here.

Coconino County is metropolitan, though it graduated to that designation only in the last census and previously had been designated nonmetropolitan. The county is nevertheless "rural" by some measures. Covering almost 19,000 square miles, it is the second largest county in the country in terms of land area, and its population density is just 6.2 per square mile.