In the past several decades, a number of policy institutes and think-tanks have been formed to open a substantial dialogue about issues affecting rural communities. The Rural Policy Research Institute is one of these organizations, and involves scientists and policy analysts from Iowa State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Nebraska and other affiliated institutions. The...

Since John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson declared war on rural poverty during their time in the White House, there has been an overriding concern with alleviating the persistently high levels of poverty in the American South. A number of organizations have developed to provide assistance to the region, and the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC), located at Mississippi State University is one...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently released the 1998 federal poverty measures. There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure: poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines. Data for both versions are available at this site. Separate data are listed for the 48 states, Alaska, and Hawaii.

In this recent paper from the Institute for Poverty Research's Working Papers series, Howard Chernick and Cordelia Reimers examine the Current Population Survey in 1994-1995 and 1997-1999 to see if there was a discernible drop in households receiving public assistance in New York City. While they found that the proportion of households receiving at least one public assistance benefit remained the...