Poverty in the Texas borderland and lower Mississippi Delta: A comparative analysis of differences by family type

Abstract We provide a comparative analysis of county-level poverty in the two poorest regions of the United States-the Texas Borderland and the Lower Mississippi Delta-with a special focus on differences by family type. Our results reveal important regional variation in both the prevalence of poverty and the composition of the poor population across major family types. Using OLS regression models of family type-specific poverty we demonstrate three key findings: 1) There are no significant regional differences in poverty levels by family type between the Borderland and the Delta, net of important structural factors that characterize the regions; 2) with the exception of the employment rate, the structural factors associated with poverty among married couple and single female-headed families are quite different; and 3) paradoxically, areas in the Borderland with high in-migration are especially likely to suffer from high married-couple family poverty. Our results suggest the need for regionally targeted and demographically tailored anti-poverty policies. 1. Introduction The Texas Borderland and Lower Mississippi Delta have long been the two poorest regions in the United States. Both are predominately rural and characterized by high shares of racial/ethnic minorities, Latinos in the Borderland and blacks in the Delta. Indeed, the high and persistent poverty suffered by the residents of these regions has much to do with the unique social position of racial and ethnic minorities in the rural U.S. (Harris and Worthen 2003; Saenz and Torres 2003; Snipp 1996), populations who share the enduring legacy of living in the shadows of "the historical remnants of institutions explicitly created to conquer, oppress, and maintain their subordinate position in society...labor contractors, immigration authorities, slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping, plantation agriculture" (Snipp 1996:127).7 Despite these similarities, however, the Borderland and the Delta also differ in many notable respects. One such example is the structure of families in the two regions. In 2000, for example, 73.5% of Borderland families were headed by married-couples compared to 62.2% of families in the Delta. In that same year, 21.7% of Borderland families were headed by single mothers, while this was true of 31.3% of Delta families. These differences are even more pronounced when race and ethnicity are considered. Whereas the family structure of non-Hispanic whites is very similar between the two regions,8 there are significant differences in the family structure of Borderland Latinos and Delta blacks. In 2000, 72.6% of Latino families in the Borderland were headed by married couples, compared to only 39.3% of black families in the Delta. And while 22.7% of Latino families in the Borderland were headed by single mothers, this family type characterized more than half (53.6%) of black families in the Delta. Family structure is, of course, a focal point of the national dialogue on poverty in the U.S. In particular, much concern has centered on the disproportionate economic hardship faced by single female-headed families relative to those living in other family and household arrangements (Bianchi 1999; Lichter and Jayakody 2002). In 2006, for example, the poverty rate stood at 28.3% for single female-headed families compared to only 4.9% for families headed by married couples (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith 2007). The substantial differences in family structure observed in the Borderland versus the Delta raise the prospect of important variation in the dynamics of family poverty in the two poorest regions in the U.S. Our paper addresses this issue by providing a comparative analysis of poverty by family type in the Borderland and the Delta. While a significant body of literature has examined economic hardship in these two regions, little research to date has taken an explicitly comparative approach. Research has either focused on the experience of the Borderland (Betts and Slottje 1994; Davila and Mattila 1985; Maril 1989; Saenz and Ballejos 1993; Tan and Ryan 2001) or the experience of the Delta (Allen-Smith, Wimberley, and Morris 2000; Brown, Xu, and Toth 1998; Deseran and Singelmann 1993; Gray 1991; Hyland and Timberlake 1993; Lee and Singelmann 2006), but it has not been structured to actually compare the poverty situation in these two regions. …