Poverty Gap Between Rural and Urban Areas Decreasing

In their Rural America at a Glance outlook, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service says the gap between median income in rural and urban America has remains about the same as it has in recent years.

Research Economist John Cromartie has better news about the poverty gap.

“That gap has shown up from the very beginning when poverty was first measured in the 1960s. The rural-urban gap has closed significantly over those decades so today the gap is around three percentage points. Around 16 percent rural poverty versus 13 percent urban poverty.”

The report did not that rural poverty is highly regional and seems to be worst in the South.