Since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was enacted, policy makers, agency administrators, community activists, and academics from a broad range of disciplines have debated and researched the implications of welfare reform in the United States. Most of the attention, however, has focused on urban rather than rural America. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty examines welfare participants who live in chronically poor rural areas of the United States where there are few job opportunities and poor systems of education, transportation, and child care. 
Kathleen Pickering and her colleagues look at welfare reform as it has been experienced in four rural and impoverished regions of the United States: American Indian reservations in South Dakota, the Rio Grande region, Appalachian Kentucky, and the Mississippi Delta. Throughout these areas the rhetoric of reform created expectations of new opportunities to find decent work and receive education and training. In fact, these expectations have largely gone unfulfilled as welfare reform has failed to penetrate poor areas where low-income families remain isolated from the economic and social mainstream of American society. 
Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty sheds welcome light on the opportunities and challenges that welfare reform has imposed on low-income families situated in disadvantaged areas. Combining both qualitative and quantitative research, it will be an excellent guide for scholars and practitioners alike seeking to address the problem of poverty in rural America.

Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty: Dreams, Disenchantments, and Diversity (Rural Studies)

Business & Money

Summers, Gene F.

Pickering, Kathleen

Harvey, Mark H.

Mushinski, David

Economics

Penn State University Press

Since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was enacted, policy makers, agency administrators, community activists, and academics from a broad range of disciplines have debated and researched the implications of welfare reform in the United States. Most of the attention, however, has focused on urban rather than rural America. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty examines welfare participants who live in chronically poor rural areas of the United States where there are few job opportunities and poor systems of education, transportation, and child care. Kathleen Pickering and her colleagues look at welfare reform as it has been experienced in four rural and impoverished regions of the United States: American Indian reservations in South Dakota, the Rio Grande region, Appalachian Kentucky, and the Mississippi Delta. Throughout these areas the rhetoric of reform created expectations of new opportunities to find decent work and receive education and training. In fact, these expectations have largely gone unfulfilled as welfare reform has failed to penetrate poor areas where low-income families remain isolated from the economic and social mainstream of American society. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty sheds welcome light on the opportunities and challenges that welfare reform has imposed on low-income families situated in disadvantaged areas. Combining both qualitative and quantitative research, it will be an excellent guide for scholars and practitioners alike seeking to address the problem of poverty in rural America.

History

Americas

Technology And Social Change In Rural Areas: A Festschrift For Eugene A. Wilkening

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Routledge

Technology And Social Change In Rural Areas

Why does rural poverty persist? Despite a variety of programs and policies that have attempted to improve the lot of the poor over the past twenty-five years, rural poverty not only persists but is getting worse. The Rural Sociological Society Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty was organized to search for answers that will lead to effective solutions. A team of more than fifty leading social scientistsanthropologists, economists, geographers, political scientists, social workers, and sociologistsworked together to examine all the leading explanations; to seek out logical flaws, obsolete beliefs, and factually discredited ideas; and to analyze incomplete explanations. This important volume presents the Task Force's findings.The Task Force report explains that the culture of poverty” theory is logically flawed and lacks factual support and that the human capital and economic organization theories are incomplete. Alone, none of these theories provides an adequate explanation for persistent rural poverty. The book reveals new directions in theory that should provide a firmer foundation for antipoverty programs and policies: Gender, race, and ethnicity must be explicitly integrated into explanations of poverty; local events and processes need to be linked to global changes; and explanations for the intergenerational transmission of poverty should be looked for in community social structures. The Task Force also explores how macrolevel economics and national and state actions contribute to the persistence of rural poverty.

Persistent Poverty In Rural America (RURAL STUDIES SERIES OF THE RURAL SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY)

Rural Sociological Society

Rural Poverty

Rural Sociological

Society Task Force

On Persistent

Westview Press

Community Economic Vitality: Major Trends & Selected Issues

North Central Regional Center

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