Ongoing Challenges in the Understanding of Rural Poverty

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on two projects by the author to draw some general conclusions about ongoing challenges in the understanding of poverty. In the first project, the author examined the survival strategies of married couple families in a rural county and concluded that access to good work enabled enrichment of those strategies. In the second project, located in the same rural county, the author concluded that single mothers were less able than the members of married couples to engage in enrichment activities and drew more heavily on others for survival. Drawing on these comparative data, the author then argues first, that research should focus more fully on the broad variety of ways in which the members of communities make ends meet in order to understand the relative poverty of those unable to engage in a varied survival strategy, and second, that research must also examine the consequences of social support for those who give as well as for those who receive it.

KEYWORDS:

• Poverty
• rural
• single-parent family