IEA: Urban/Rural Poverty
Urban Poverty
"They shout, but nobody hears them. They sleep outside, yet nobody sees them. And they ask for opportunities, but nobody answers their prayers. They are called "the poor." Our national challenge is to tap into the current wave of unease and idealism, and spark a moment of purpose that compels us to think, to strategize and, most of all, to keep searching for solutions. Many, of course, have never stopped trying and their efforts are noteworthy. However, despite, these laudable works by diverse individuals and institutions, far too many Americans are poor."
- Rey Ramsey, Founding Publisher of the Horizon Poverty Series: people, places, and solutions.
Urban Poverty Fast Facts:
- 750,000 Americans are homeless on any given night, and over the course of a year as many as 2 million people experience homelessness for some period of time (National Alliance to End Homelessness).
- At least 230,000 homeless people use shelters and soup kitchens in our nation's cities at any given time. This data suggests that at any given time between 500,000 and 600,000 individuals are homeless (The Urban Institute).
- Throughout San Francisco, over 17,532 citations were given out for so-called "Quality of Life" crimes such as sleeping and camping in 1996 (The San Francisco Homeless Coalition).
- The fastest growing group of homeless people consists of families with children. Today, families make up about 36% of the people who become homeless (National Alliance to End Homelessness).
- About 600,000 families and 1.35 million children experience homelessness in the U.S. each year, and about 50% of the total homeless population is a part of a family (The San Francisco Homeless Coalition, 2005).
- While the child poverty rate is highest for African Americas (33 percent) and Latino children (30 percent), by international standards it is also exceptionally high for white children (9 percent) (Child Poverty Fact Sheet).
- TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) is the program most often referred to as "welfare". As of March 1999, there were 2.7 million families on welfare, 47% fewer families than the high of 5.1 million families in 1994 (The Urban Institute).
- While poverty seems to be improving in this country, the aid is dismal. In 1997 the average monthly TANF payment amount for a family of three was $362 (The Urban Institute).
Urban and rural poverty are interlinked. Urban work encourages migration from the countryside to the city. Urban-oriented policies alone may fail to reduce urban poverty. It is therefore important to address rural poverty in order to make sustainable progress on urban poverty (IFAD, the International Fund for Agricultural Development).
Rural Poverty
"What do you say about employment in which workers who labor hard than anyone else get paid the least? Is this what we mean by participation in democratic life?"
- Robert Back, Immigration and Naturalization Service for the Urban Institute.
Rural Poverty Fast Facts:
- Approximately 7.4 million persons who live in rural areas were poor in 1999. This means that the rate of rural poverty for 1999 was 14.2 percent (Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture).
- In the U.S., 51.2 percent of rural poverty is found in the South (Iowa State University, College of Agriculture).
- In the North Central Region, the rural poor are more likely to be white. In 1993 more than 90 percent of those in rural poverty from this region were white, with African Americans comprising 3.7 percent and Native Americans 2.9 percent (Iowa State University, College of Agriculture).
- Hired farm-workers made up 1/3 of the farm workforce (Economic Research Service, USDA).
- Hired farm-workers are predominately male, Hispanic, young, never married, less educated, non-citizens, and located in the South and West census regions (Economic Research Service, USDA).
- Hired farm-workers continue to earn about 58 percent as much as all wage and salary workers do (Economic Research Service, USDA).
- About 45 percent of all hired farm-workers, 25 and older, are low-wage earners and earn less than the poverty threshold for a family of four (Economic Research Service, USDA).
- Over one-third earn family incomes of less than $15,000 (Economic Research Service, USDA).
- In less developed countries, Rural has a different meaning. Generally, there are two main rural characteristics. First, rural people usually live on farmsteads or in groups of houses containing perhaps 5,000 - 10,000 persons, separated by farmland, pasture, trees or scrubland. Second, the majority of rural people spend most of their time on farms (IFAD - International Fund for Agriculture Development).
- Rural Poverty has increased by 10 to 20 percent in a number of Latin American countries in the past three years, and the incidence of rural poverty is particularly high among indigenous populations; of the world's 250 million indigenous people, 70% live in Asia (IFAD).
Prevention and Progress
There are a number of effective steps that organizations and individuals like you can take toward ending homelessness and poverty. Through education, advocacy, understanding and volunteering we can help to alleviate poverty and homelessness. For more information refer to http://endhomelessness.org/section/action/actnow.
Great Online Resources
Urban Poverty:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
This is a site that will provide you with knowledge about homelessness in the U.S. but also inform you on the HHS homeless assistance programs, publications, research results, and many other resourced related to homelessness:
The National Coalition for Homelessness
This site offers fact sheets on various aspects of homelessness.
The Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco
This site is a good source for seeing how homelessness effects and is being dealt with in on particular city.
The Urban Institute
The Urban institute is a very broad and well-versed source on all aspects of homelessness.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness
The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to mobilize individuals and the nonprofit, profit and public sectors of society to end homelessness.
The Pratt Institute Center for Community Development (PICCED)
The Pratt Institute has been in service to the community for over thirty years. It was established in 1963 to create a partnership between Pratt Institute's Department of City and Regional Planning and local organizations that were struggling to address issues of urban deterioration and poverty. This site, however, deals with the global phenomenon of urban poverty and the facts and strategies to deal with it.
The International Forum on Urban Poverty (IFUP)
The International Forum on Urban Poverty is a partnership of local and international actors working for the eradication of poverty according to a strategy based on sound governance, partnership and the participation of people living in poverty.
Rural Poverty:
The Economic Research Service
As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the information found at this website is to be taken with a grain of salt, or analyzed to realize what is exactly true and what is not. Being a representative of the government, the responsibility of maintaining good political standing, the information at this source is a great way of seeing how executive branch of the government always tries to make things sound better.
International Fund for Agriculture Development
IFAD is a specialized agency of the United Nations established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. This site will give you great information on international rural poverty and the efforts being made toward betterment.
The Global Policy Forum
This site provides a tracking of UN global policy making, and under the Social/Economic Policy option, there is some interesting information on the rise of rural poverty in Latin America.
Joint Center for Poverty Research
This Congressional Research Briefing deals with the rural dimensions of welfare reform and contains links to great resources.
The International Monetary Fund
This link will take you to the website of the larges international financial conglomeration in the world. It will provide you with important information about the financial and macroeconomic factors that drive development, and you will learn that the end result is rural poverty. Read this with a raised brow, however, because the IMF itself plays a large role in rural poverty's persistence. This is a great link, but make sure you look around the IMF site.
Workers Power Global
This site is a great resource for understanding the harm that has been and continues to be cause by "imperialistic" capitalist economic policies of the modern age. It is a very interesting site because it explains what the problem is with current global economic policies, and their connection to rural poverty, and the efforts being made to change that.
Take Action - Visit SERVE for a complete listing of local
organizations that need your help!
Email us at wehaveissues@umich.edu
