Poverty, Policy, and Place: How Poverty and Policies to Alleviate Poverty Are Shaped by Local Characteristics

Abstract

This article synthesizes an extensive literature on how local characteristics might affect the nature of poverty, particularly U.S. rural poverty. The attributes discussed include the natural environment, economic structure, public and community institutions, social norms, and demographic characteristics. In each case, the author discusses the ways in which these attributes can affect poverty and indicates what this implies about effective antipoverty policies. Multiple causal factors affect place-specific outcomes and interact so that “outcome” and “cause” are difficult to untangle. One implication is that both place-based and people-based policies may be necessary.