The Impact of Migration on Poverty Concentrations in the United States, 1995-2000

Abstract

Poverty is frequently conceptualized as an attribute of either people or places. Yet residential movement of poor people can redistribute poverty across places, affecting and reshaping the spatial concentration of economic disadvantage. In this article, we utilize 1995 to 2000 county-to-county migration data from the 2000 United States decennial census to explore how differential migration rates of the poor and nonpoor affect local incidence of poverty, and how migration reconfigures poverty rates across metropolitan, micropolitan, and noncore counties. We further examine the impact of differential migration rates on African American and Latino poverty rates, two groups that have experienced higher than average poverty rates and have a sizable presence in rural areas. Our analysis indicates that during the 1990s the poor moved at rates equal to or greater than the nonpoor, and that, especially in micropolitan counties, this movement tended to deepen existing poverty concentrations. Both African American and Latino migration patterns tended to reinforce existing poverty concentrations, a result similar to that of the population as a whole, although the migration patterns of both groups more severely exacerbated poverty in high-poverty noncore counties.

The Spatial Concentration of America's Rural Poor Population: A Postrecession Update

“…As a final contribution, we introduce the use of concentration curves, which provide comprehensible illustrations of changes in concentrated poverty over time. Overall, our findings contribute to well‐established literatures in rural sociology on spatial inequality and rural poverty, including work on “poor places” and concentrated poverty (Cotter ; Duncan ; Foulkes and Schafft ; Lichter and Johnson ; Lobao ; Lobao, Hooks, and Tickamyer ; Lobao and Saenz ; Nord, Luloff, and Jensen ; Tickamyer and Duncan ). We also add to the more recent literature on the spatially uneven impacts of the Great Recession (Rickman and Guettabi ; Slack and Myers ; Thiede and Monnat ; Ulrich‐Schad ; Ulrich‐Schad, Henly, and Safford ) and, we hope, provide an empirical basis for guiding social policy in rural America.…”

“…We study concentrated poverty dynamics at the county level, an approach consistent with prior research by rural sociologists on this topic (Foulkes and Schafft ; Lichter and Johnson ; Nord et al ). A county‐level analysis also offers some advantages vis‐à‐vis higher‐ and lower‐level units.…”

Gentrification and Segregated Wealth in Rural America: Home Value Sorting in Destination Counties

“…The RGS's weighting by rural out-migration is sensitive to counter examples of reciprocity-with the premise being that out-migration from a rural destination to another rural county has different economic implications than does a more reciprocal pattern of moves toward cities. Put simply, moving between two rural counties does not generally reflect an improvement in one's economic opportunity, particularly when the mover is leaving one of the nation's few growing rural counties (Foulkes and Newbold 2008;Foulkes and Schafft 2010). Because the RGS is weighted by displacement to other rural counties, high RGS counties are those where urban-inflow are accompanied by rural outflow, which due to escalation of living costs is likely to occur in counties attracting affluent newcomers compared to poor newcomers.…”

“…While this may not hold true for each household, it proves rational on the aggregate because cities and rural places are spheres of different levels of incomes and educational attainment (Ghelfi 2002;USDA Economic Research Service 2003), conferring the average urban-rural migrant with relative privilege in their new communities. This privilege is also reflected in the financial costs associated with moving, the differences between urban and rural real estate values, and the higher average ages (Foulkes and Schafft 2010). However, the measure's second primary assumption reflected in its weighting means that high RGS counties are more likely to be destinations for affluent movers than poor movers.…”

International Handbook of Rural Demography

“…Thus, questions related to underemployment are not part of the monthly Current Population Survey from which the BLS draws its employment numbers. Part of this concentration of poverty may be due to the mobility of the poor, and their desire to seek out cheaper places to live, thereby leading to significant clusters of poor people, which may in turn make the problem all the more intractable Foulkes & Schafft, 2010). The causes of rural poverty, and differences in poverty rates based on demographic, social, and geographic differences, have been a very fertile area of research for rural scholars Jensen, Goetz, & Swaminathan, 2006; see also Chapter 20 in this volume).…”