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。人们不太了解的是，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，而媒体对全国城市中显而易见的城市“下层阶级”的关注又强化了这一问题。我们对国家统计数据的依赖很大程度上偏向于城市地区，这往往掩盖了美国非大城市和农村地区经济困难的程度和原因。利用各种人口普查和调查数据，本研究的主要目的是检查1959- 1988年期间美国儿童经济地位的地理差异或空间不平等。具体而言，本研究旨在确定美国儿童贫困状况地区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户主家庭的增加吗？或者，儿童贫困主要在于儿童父母所经历的日益恶化的就业条件？更重要的是，这些造成儿童经济困难和不平等的原因是如何随时间和地理空间而变化的？一般认为儿童贫穷是由于家庭结构的变化，这种看法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，农村儿童经济地位的恶化可能主要是由于父母的创收能力，这种能力在1980年代受到农村经济停滞的不利影响。显然，要准确了解今天儿童贫穷的空间差异，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相互加强和相互抵消的影响具有一定的敏感性。

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.