Rural Blacks and Native Americans suffer from more prevalent poverty. The groups' poverty rates were 34.8 percent and 35.6 percent, compared with 12.2 percent among rural non-Hispanic Whites. The poverty rate for rural children in 1995 was 22.4 percent, equivalent to 3.2 million children living in families below the poverty line. Among people living in rural female-headed families, the poverty rate was 39.3 percent in 1995. More than 60 percent of the rural poor were in families with one or more working members.
Poverty reduces children's opportunity to learn, both in the family and at school.
Schools in rural areas need to find effective strategies to alleviate the difficulties facing poor children. Even more importantly, state governments and local officials must work out broader programs to offer more generous support for the poor, including social services and job opportunities with decent wages. On the other hand, counties specializing in manufacturing and counties depending on farming and mining have experienced modest to slow growth in population. The current age-differentiated growth rate sharply differs from that of the 1980s, when the number of older people increased at rates many times higher than that of younger people. These statistics suggest that the 1990s population rebound in rural areas largely involves younger people.