Citation

Jensen L. Rural Real. 2006; 1(1): online.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Rural Sociological Society)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina exposed the poverty that lay in our midst, and although the images served to remind the country of its enduring inequality, the picture was one of urban poverty. What the images failed to expose is the rural face of poverty, which in the South — and especially in the Delta — is the face of poverty. About one-third of the area hit by Katrina is rural, and the rate of poverty in the rural South stands at nearly 18%, the highest of any region in the country. What is too often overlooked is that poverty rates nationwide are consistently higher in rural than in urban areas (as a percentage of the population), and poverty is far more persistent in rural localities.