Rural poverty rate well above average

By Charles Abbott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 15.4 percent of rural Americans lived in poverty in 2007, well above the U.S. average and despite a modest rise in income for rural households, the government said on Tuesday.

The rural poverty rate was statistically unchanged from 15.2 percent in 2006, said the Census Bureau. The U.S. poverty rate was 12.5 percent in 2007, also statistically unchanged from 2006's 12.3 percent.

Census said median rural-household income, adjusted for inflation, rose 3.1 percent in 2007 to $40,615 but was nearly $10,000 per household lower than the nationwide figure of $50,233, which grew by 1.3 percent from 2006.

Farmers are collecting record-high farm-gate prices for corn, wheat and soybeans, but the farm sector is a small part of the rural population, said Tim Marema, a spokesman for the Center for Rural Strategies. The center, based in Whitesburg, Kentucky, aims to improve rural life.

Sixteen percent of Americans, or 47.7 million people, live outside metropolitan areas. About 3 million people, including owners, work on some 2.1 million U.S. farms.

For decades, rural poverty rates have run above urban levels. In 2007, for example, the poverty rate in metropolitan areas was 11.9 percent, 3.5 percentage points lower than the rural rate.

Kathy Miller of the Rural Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Columbia, Missouri, said most counties with high or persistent poverty rates are in rural areas, where jobs are scarcer and transportation and child care are more difficult to obtain. They have sizable minority-group populations.

High-poverty rural regions include the U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi Delta, the U.S-Mexico border in the Southwest, and Indian reservations in the Plains.

The poverty threshold ranged from $10,590 for a single person to $21,203 for a family of four in 2007.

Rural and Urban Poverty Rates in percentages

Urban Rural

2007 11.9 15.4

2006 11.8 15.2

2005 12.2 14.5

2004 N/A N/A