
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 2, 1992                   TAG: 9203020266
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

RURAL POOR BEING IGNORED, STUDY SAYS

Americans living in poverty in rural areas are more likely than their urban counterparts to be long-term poor and are often ignored, a Washington research organization reported today.

The authors of the study argue that rural America contains a substantial underclass - from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to farming communities in the northern Plains - although there is a common belief that the nation's underclass is almost exclusively in the central city.

The rural underclass, which accounts for about a quarter of the total underclass, goes largely ignored by researchers and policy-makers, the authors contend.

The report said members of the underclass - those in poverty for long periods of time - are adults who did not complete high school, receive public assistance and, for females, are a never-married mother, or, for males, are long-term unemployed.

And in rural areas, more than half of those who make up the so-called underclass are white, compared with just 17 percent in central cities.

"Northern inner-city minorities are not unique and by some measures the black underclass is more highly concentrated in the rural South than in the urban North," wrote William O'Hare and Brenda Curry-White, researchers at the University of Louisville and authors of the report, issued by the Population Reference Bureau.

In some cases, the problems of the poor are more acute in rural areas.

Blacks living in the rural South are more likely than blacks in the urban North to be members of the underclass, O'Hare said.

At the same time, the largest share of the nation's underclass resides in cities: of the 3 million members of the underclass in 1990, almost half lived in central cities, while 23 percent lived in suburbs and 28 percent lived in rural areas.

Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB