Poverty, Spatial Inequality, and the Changing Economic Status of Children

儿童是当今美国最贫困的群体之一，大约五分之一的儿童生活在收入低于官方贫困标准的家庭中。不太受重视的是，农村儿童的贫困率甚至更高。不幸的是，今天的贫困被视为一个根本性的城市问题，媒体对国家城市中非常明显的城市“下层阶级”的关注加剧了这一问题。我们对国家统计数据的依赖，往往掩盖了美国非城市和农村地区经济困难的程度和原因，这些统计数据严重偏向城市地区。利用各种人口普查和调查数据，这项研究的主要目的是检查1959-88年间美国儿童经济地位的地理差异或空间不平等。具体地说，这项研究试图找出美国儿童贫困状况地区间差异的主要经济和人口来源。儿童贫困的增加是由于家庭结构的变化和女性户主家庭的增加吗？或者，儿童贫困主要是因为儿童父母的就业条件不断恶化吗？更重要的是，这些经济困难和儿童不平等的根源如何随着时间和地理空间的变化而变化？普遍认为，儿童贫困是由于家庭结构变化造成的，这一观点可能不适用于农村地区，因为农村地区的儿童通常与父母同住。在农村地区，农村儿童日益恶化的经济状况可能主要根源于父母的创收能力，而在1980年代，由于农村经济停滞不前，父母的创收能力受到了负面影响。显然，要准确了解当今儿童贫困的空间差异，就需要对农村和城市地区不断变化的家庭结构和经济条件所产生的交替强化和平衡的影响有一定的敏感性。

Children represent one of the most impoverished groups in America today, with roughly one fifth living in households with income below official poverty guidelines. Less well appreciated is that poverty rates among rural children are even higher. Unfortunately, poverty today is viewed as a fundamentally urban problem, which is reinforced by media attention to a highly visible urban "underclass" in the nation's cities. Our reliance on national statistics, which are heavily weighted in favor of urban areas, often masks the extent and causes of economic hardship in America's nonmetropolitan and rural areas. Drawing upon a variety of census and survey data, the primary objective of this research is to examine geographic variation or spatial inequality in the economic status of American children over the 1959-88 period. Specifically, this research seeks to identify the primary economic and demographic sources of area-to-area differences in the poverty status of American children. Is the rise in child poverty due to changing family structure and increases in female-headed households? Or, is child poverty located primarily in the deteriorating employment conditions experienced by children's parents? More important, how do these sources of economic hardship and inequality among children vary over time and geographic space? The common view that child poverty is located in changing family structure may be inappropriate for rural areas, where children typically live with both parents. In rural areas, the deteriorating economic status of rural children may instead be rooted primarily in the income-generating abilities of parents, which have been negatively affected during the 1980s by a stagnating rural economy. Clearly, an accurate understanding of spatial disparities in child poverty today requires some sensitivity to the alternatively reinforcing and counterbalancing effects of changing family structure and economic conditions in rural and urban areas.