1. This and all subsequent tables are based on analyses of the March 1990 Current Population Survey (CPS). Conducted annually, the March CPS contains social, demographic and economic information on a representative sample of approximately 50,000 U.S. households and 150,000 individuals residing within them. In the analysis, individuals are defined as residing in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) versus metro counties, and within the latter, central cities versus other metro areas. While the terms rural and nonmetro are sometimes used interchangeably for expository purposes, readers should be aware that in the analysis I do not use the Census Bureau distinction between rural and urban areas.
2. See Leif Jensen and Marta Tienda, “Nonmetropolitan Minority Families in the United States: Trends in Racial and Ethnic Economic Stratification, 1959–1986,”Rural Sociology, Vol. 54 (1989), pp. 509–532.
3. For exceptions in research see Jensen and Tienda (1989);
4. Gene F. Summers, “Minorities in Rural Society,”Rural Sociology, Vol. 56 (1991), pp. 177-188; Rogelio Saenz and John K. Thomas, “Minority Poverty in Nonmetropolitan Texas,”Rural Sociology, Vol. 56 (1991), pp. 204-223; C. Matthew Snipp, et al., “Persistent Rural Poverty and Racial and Ethnic Minorities,” inPersistent Poverty in Rural America pp. 173-199; Joyce E. Allen and Alton Thompson, “Rural Poverty Among Racial and Ethnic Minorities,”American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 72 (1990), pp. 1161–1168.
5. This is not to say that employment represents a viable strategy to combat poverty in all circumstances. To be sure, the elderly and disabled poor, groups relatively more prevalent in rural areas, cannot be expected to work.