[Agriculture Fact Book 98]

Nonmetropolitan Income and Poverty

Nonmetropolitan median household income, registering $28,089 in 1996, remained unchanged from 1995 to 1996 when adjusted for inflation. The median income of metropolitan households increased 1.3 percent to $37,640, widening the income gap between nonmetro and metro households. Nonmetro household income lagged behind metro household income by 25.4 percent in 1996. Median household incomes also reflect the economic disadvantage of nonmetro minorities, families headed by women, and women living alone (table 4-6).

The poverty rate in nonmetro America stood at 15.9 percent in 1996, essentially unchanged from the previous year, and higher than the metro poverty rate of 13.2 percent. The nonmetro poverty rate has been quite stable over the last 8 years, remaining within a range of 1.6 percent (figure 4-2). The nonmetro-metro poverty gap, at 2.7 percentage points, widened for the second consecutive year. Over half of the nonmetro poor (52 percent) live in the South, a disproportionate concentration compared with the South's 44 percent of the total nonmetro population.

Nonmetro poverty rates continued to be higher than metro poverty rates across demographic groups (figure 4-3). Families headed by women experienced the highest poverty rates of all family types (41.1 percent in nonmetro areas and 34.4 percent in metro), and a high proportion of nonmetro women living alone were also poor (30.4 percent). Over one-fifth of nonmetro children lived in poor families.

The poverty rates among nonmetro minorities were much higher than those of nonmetro Whites and substantially higher than those of metro minorities. The poverty rate was highest for nonmetro Blacks (35.2 percent), followed by nonmetro Native Americans (33.7 percent) and nonmetro Hispanics (33.4 percent). Despite the higher incidence of poverty among nonmetro minorities, almost two-thirds of the nonmetro poor were non-Hispanic Whites, because of the large White majority in the nonmetro population. Over the past 10 years, the Hispanic share of the nonmetro poor has nearly doubled, growing from 5.8 percent in 1986 to 11.1 percent in 1996.

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