U.S. recession hikes rate of rural poverty, By Bill Bishop, January 31, 2012, Daily Yonder: “The percentage of people living in poverty was higher in rural America than in either exurban or urban counties in 2010, according to the U.S. Census. And these rates have increased since the recession began in 2007. In 2007, before the recession began, 15.8 percent of those living in rural counties fell under the poverty line. Three years later, that rate in rural counties had increased to 17.8 percent…”

• China raises poverty line, increasing number of official poor by 100 million, Associated Press, November 29, 2011, Washington Post: “Even with its booming economy, China now has more poor people - at least officially. A sharp upward revision in the official poverty line, announced by the government Tuesday, means that 128 million Chinese in rural areas now qualify as poor, 100 million more than under the previous standard. The new threshold of about $1 a day nearly doubles the previous amount. While the revised poverty line is still below the World Bank threshold of $1.25 a day, the change brings China closer to international norms and better reflects the country’s overall higher standards of living after three decades of buoyant growth…”
• China increases rural poverty limit to $1 a day, November 29, 2011, BBC News: “China has redefined the level at which people in rural areas are considered poor to include everyone earning less than $1 a day (6.5 yuan). Previously people in the countryside were only regarded as poor if they earned less than 55 cents a day. The move should see millions more people get access to state benefits. Some 27 million people were classified as rural poor last year. The new threshold is expected to increase that number fourfold…”

• FCC launching $4-billion program to narrow digital divide, By Alexa Vaughn, November 9, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “The Federal Communications Commission is launching a $4-billion program to narrow the digital divide by making high-speed Internet access and computers more affordable for more than 25 million mainly low-income Americans. The FCC said a public-private partnership, which includes major broadband and computer companies and nonprofits, will make ‘the biggest effort ever’ across the nation to help poorer citizens as well as rural residents, seniors and minorities obtain broadband access. Those who qualify would pay $9.95 a month for Internet access at 1 megabit per second and $150 for a refurbished laptop running the Windows 7 operating system, along with applications that include digital literacy training…”
• Internet access: Discount for poor families with kids, By Peter Svensson (AP), November 10, 2011, Christian Science Monitor: “Cable companies said Wednesday that they will offer Internet service for $9.95 per month to homes with children that are eligible for free school lunches. The offer will start next summer and is part of an initiative the Federal Communications Commission cobbled together to get more U.S. homes connected to broadband. One third, or about 35 million homes, don’t have broadband. That affects people’s ability to educate themselves and find and apply for jobs, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said…”

• Study confirms child hunger is a growing problem in rural areas, By Laura Bauer, August 24, 3011, Kansas City Star: “Robert Krogsdale says his six daughters have never missed dinner or gone hungry. But look at what the Bates County, Mo., man and his wife, Reanna, have to do to make that happen: They use food stamps. They buy bread and fruit on sale. They rely on cheap staples like spaghetti. For Christmas, his parents give them packages of beef they use throughout the year. And once a month, the Krogsdales drive 17 miles from their rural home into Butler, Mo. - sometimes in the family’s 12-passenger, 12 miles-per-gallon van - to load up on groceries at a food pantry. ‘I make sure they have their plates and mouths full,’ Krogsdale said of their six daughters, as well as two stepsons who are with the family on the weekends. ‘If it boils down to I don’t eat, it’s real simple.’ Often, when people think of the nation’s hungry kids, the image is of families in urban-core neighborhoods. In rural areas, where farmers harvest crops and ranchers raise livestock, kids do all right - or at least that was the perception of many…”
• Hunger a problem for Southwest Michigan children, new study shows, By Chris Fusciardi, August 26, 2011, Kalamazoo Gazette: “More than one in five children under the age of 18 in Kalamazoo County live in households that are struggling with hunger, ac­cording to a new study. The study, ‘Map the Meal Gap: Child Food Insecurity 2011,’ found that 21.5 percent of children in Kalamazoo County are struggling with hunger, a figure that was determined using 2009 U.S. Census data including median family income and childhood poverty rates. The study was released Thurs­day by the Food Bank of South Central Michigan and the national nonprofit agency Feeding America…”
• Food Bank: 1-in-4 Midland County kids hungry; some West Texas areas much higher, By Kathleen Thurber, August 25, 2011, Midland Reporter-Telegram: “More than one in three children suffer from food insecurity in the 22-county area served by the West Texas Food Bank, according to a report released Thursday. Data released by Feeding America shows 24.8 percent of children in Midland County deal with hunger issues. And while that’s lower than the 34.9 percent of children in the West Texas area who are hungry, it still is above the national average of 23.2 percent, according to the report…”

Tax credits and rural incomes, By Ron Durst and Tracey Farrigan, May 19, 2011, Daily Yonder: “Since 1980, the total cost of tax expenditures has increased by over 250 percent and currently exceeds $1.1 trillion. A primary reason for this growth is that there is greater bipartisan support to enact tax expenditures than to fund or increase direct spending programs, especially since tax expenditures are often viewed as tax cuts. These expenditures have significantly reduced the share of taxpayers who owe Federal income tax. As a result, in 2009, only about half of rural taxpayers owed any Federal income tax. This is slightly below the overall rate of 53 percent of all taxpayers and reflects the lower income levels of rural taxpayers. In 2008, 22 percent of rural taxpayers received a cash payment from one or more of the refundable tax credits. The average amount was $2,428. Thus, an effect of the increased use of the tax code for social policy goals has been an increase in the number of rural taxpayers who owe no Federal income tax and who receive a cash payment as a result of the refundable tax credits…”

Rural poor caught in budget war over clinics, By Curt Brown, May 14, 2011, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Deb Zupke gets both angry and bewildered that the ordinary-looking strip-mall storefront in her hometown has become a target of the budget battles in Washington and St. Paul. Planned Parenthood relocated its clinic to the site just next to the Ace Hardware store in the Belle Mar Mall one year ago. Nearly 5,000 women come from the local university and far-flung farms to visit the four exam rooms, the little lab area and the bland-but-warm reception area every year — just like Zupke and her two older sisters did while growing up on a dairy farm 10 miles west of here. ‘For rural women like us, this was the only place to go for our annual exams and birth control,’ said Zupke, now 27 and pregnant with her first child. ‘Abortion is the first thing that pops into everybody’s mind when they hear Planned Parenthood, and I don’t know why. I know what their real focus is because I was a recipient, and it was my primary care.’ In this and 15 other outstate clinics from Albert Lea to Thief River Falls, nearly 60 percent of Planned Parenthood’s 64,000 Minnesota patients come for Pap smears, breast cancer screenings, infection treatment and birth control. Far beyond offering birth control, the clinics have become the backbone of the public health system in outstate Minnesota, where health-care options are increasingly sparse…”

Building wealth in rural America, By Ray Lopez, April 19, 2011, Daily Yonder: “Residents of rural communities face different challenges than their urban counterparts when they try to build assets or take steps to achieve financial security. The reasons are many and familiar. Rural communities have seen their share of economic struggles in recent years. Nearly one in six people living in rural America fell below the poverty line in 2009, according to U.S. Census data. Of the nearly 3 million Texas residents who were classified as rural by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, 19.5 percent were below the poverty line. That is 3 percentage points higher than in urban Texas. Unemployment and educational attainment levels were also worse in rural Texas than in urban Texas…”

Mobile services making rural poverty a little more bearable, By Barbara Cotter, March 26, 2011, Colorado Springs Gazette: “The elderly man shooting the breeze with folks at an Ellicott food and clothing pantry is reluctant to share his full name, but when it comes to discussing his financial situation, he’s an open book. ‘I’m poor, lady. I’m very poor,’ says the man, who will identify himself only as ‘Mr. Hughes.’ The 71-year-old former electrician lives with his wife and a caretaker and survives on about $910 a month in Social Security. He talks about having to choose between heat and food, how he sometimes has to go without gas in his car. Even paying for his oxygen can be a struggle. ‘And yeah, there’s times I don’t eat,’ he says in a gruff voice interrupted by rhythmic puffs from his oxygen tank. Poverty challenges people no matter where they live. But a hard life is made harder for Hughes and hundreds of other financially strapped people who live on the eastern plains of El Paso County, where unending stretches of two-lane and dirt roads connect one small town with few social services to other small towns with few social services…”

• Two Kentuckys: Cities grow while rural areas decline, Census shows, By Bill Estep, March 18, 2011, Lexington Herald-Leader: “Kentucky’s Golden Triangle continued to grow during the last decade as the population drained away from the eastern and western coalfields and farm counties along the Mississippi River. That’s the overarching news from the state’s official 2010 U.S. Census count, released Thursday. The state as a whole grew a modest 6.1 percent from 2000 to 2010, to a total population of 4,339,367 as of last April 1, according to a Herald-Leader analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The numbers released Thursday include more detail: population breakdowns by city, county, race, ethnicity and voting age that shed light on the state’s internal shifts and the growth in the number of Hispanic residents - up 112 percent since 2000…”
• Census data confirms suburban growth, greater diversity in Minn., By Elizabeth Dunbar, March 16, 2011, Minnesota Public Radio: “Minnesota has become slightly more racially diverse, and Minneapolis and St. Paul have lagged behind population growth in other parts of the state over the past 10 years. Those are just a few of the trends found in 2010 census data that state and local officials will examine as they re-draw voting districts and plan government services for the future. The results of the annual American Community Survey already provided officials with information about Minnesota’s population and diversity trends. The survey has replaced the long-form of the census used to track things like poverty and English proficiency. But the release of the new data gives officials detailed counts of the people who live in a particular urban neighborhood or small town. It also provides more detailed demographic information…”

Expanded Medicaid a lifesaver for rural poor in Minn., By Tom Robertson, March 14, 2011, Minnesota Public Radio: “Sweeping changes to the Medicaid program in Minnesota this month have expanded health coverage for tens of thousands of low-income adults. For many of those people in Greater Minnesota, the expansion of Medicaid means they’ll be able to access health care closer to home. That’s good news to Jacque Morrow, 43, a homeless woman who sometimes seeks shelter at the People’s Church in Bemidji. Morrow and other rural clients who were covered under General Assistance Medical Care - adults without children with incomes at or below 75 percent of the federal poverty guideline - struggled to access health care. That’s because under the old program, they could only be treated at one of four hospitals - all in the Twin Cities…”

In quarter of U.S. counties, deaths outnumbering births, By Hope Yen and John Raby (AP), February 23, 2011, Las Vegas Review-Journal: “In America’s once-thriving coal country, 87-year-old Ed Shepard laments a prosperous era gone by, when shoppers lined the streets and government lent a helping hand. Now, here as in one-fourth of all U.S. counties, West Virginia’s graying residents are slowly dying off. Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call ‘natural decrease.’ Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending…”

Digital age is slow to arrive in rural America, By Kim Severson, February 17, 2011, New York Times: “After a couple of days in this part of rural Alabama, it is hard to complain about a dropped iPhone call or a Cee Lo video that takes a few seconds too long to load. The county administrator cannot get broadband at her house. Neither can the sportswriter at The Thomasville Times. Here in Coffeeville, the only computer many students ever touch is at the high school. ‘I’m missing a whole lot,’ said Justin Bell, 17. ‘I know that.’ As the world embraces its digital age - two billion people now use the Internet regularly - the line delineating two Americas has become more broadly drawn. There are those who have reliable, fast access to the Internet, and those, like about half of the 27,867 people here in Clarke County, who do not. In rural America, only 60 percent of households use broadband Internet service, according to a report released Thursday by the Department of Commerce. That is 10 percent less than urban households. Over all, 28 percent of Americans do not use the Internet at all…”

Poverty highest in rural America, rising in recession, By Bill Bishop, December 27, 2010, Daily Yonder: “Nearly one in six people living in rural America fell below the poverty line in 2009, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. And poverty rates in rural counties continue to be higher than in rural and urban communities. In 2009, the poverty rate in rural America was 17.26%, according to the Yonder’s analysis of Census Bureau data. The rate in exurban counties was 13.3%; and in urban counties, the rate was 13.9%. The national poverty rate in 2009 was 14.4%. Rural, urban and exurban poverty rates were higher in 2009 than before the recession began in late 2007. The 2009 rates for urban, rural and exurban counties were all about one percentage point higher than the rates in 2006. There were 8.3 million people living below the poverty line in rural counties in 2009, half a million more than in 2006. Nationally 42.4 million people fell below the poverty line in 2009, 4 million more than before the recession began…”

• Report: Colorado poverty levels rise, By Colleen O’Connor, December 15, 2010, Denver Post: “The number of Colorado neighborhoods with a significant number of residents living in poverty doubled over the past decade, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. Neighborhoods with at least 20 percent of people in poverty doubled from about one in 10 at the start of the decade to one in five by the end of the decade. For children, the reality was even more harsh: One in five neighborhoods had at least 20 percent of its children living in poverty in 2000, which increased to an average of one in three neighborhoods between 2005 and 2009. The number of neighborhoods with at least 30 percent of children living in poverty nearly tripled, to 206 in the second half of the decade from 74 at the start…”
• Census details poverty, low education in Eastern Kentucky, By Marcus Green, December 14, 2010, Louisville Courier-Journal: “Kentucky has 13 counties, mostly in the eastern part of the state, whose median household incomes are below $25,000 — including Owsley County, which also has the nation’s smallest percentage of bachelor’s degrees, new U.S. Census Bureau data shows. The figures from the American Community Survey put the poverty and low education in Kentucky’s rural regions in contrast to the more prosperous counties near Louisville, Lexington and Cincinnati…”
• Rural America gets even more sparsely populated, By Doug Smith and Richard Fausset, December 15, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The majority of the nation’s sparsely populated rural counties lost even more residents in the last decade, though some of the counties - particularly those in the Mountain West - saw population gains that may be the result of retirees striking out for areas that are both scenic and affordable, according to a Times analysis of figures released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday. The data offer the first detailed portrait of heartland America in a decade, covering the roughly 1,400 counties of fewer than 20,000 people. The numbers also show a growing Latino presence in these counties…”
• Poverty in small towns increasing, By Michelle Dupler, December 15, 2010, Tacoma News Tribune: “Poverty rates in small towns in the Mid-Columbia tended to be higher than state and national averages between 2005 and last year, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Tuesday. Mesa, for example, had 53 percent of the Franklin County town’s estimated 472 residents lived in poverty, and had an annual median income of just $27,083. The national median income estimated for last year was $49,777, with 14.3 percent of people living in poverty…”
• Poverty rise in region’s small towns ’sobering’, By Louise Knott Ahern, December 15, 2010, Lansing State Journal: “Mid-Michigan’s small towns have not been spared the skyrocketing poverty rates that have plagued larger urban areas for the past several years, according to data released Tuesday. The American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that even though towns such as Grand Ledge, Williamston and Eaton Rapids have seen only modest population changes since 2000, the number of families living beneath the federal poverty level has risen drastically. In Williamston, for example, the number of families living below poverty has risen from 6.4 percent in 2000 to an average of 15.5 percent over the past five years, according to the report…”

Rural areas face challenges to eradicate extreme poverty, By James Melik, December 6, 2010, BBC News: “Some 350 million people living in rural areas being lifted out of extreme poverty in the past decade, according to The Rural Poverty Report, published by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a United Nations (UN) agency. However, in spite of this, more than a billion people around the world still continue to suffer. The UN describes extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 (80p) a day. But factors such as human development, a lack of basic needs, vulnerability, livelihood, unsustainability and social exclusion are also considered in the report, which reflects on rural areas across the world and the implications for global food security. The last report came out in 2001 but, according to IFAD’s president Kananyo Nwanze, ideally it should come out more frequently. ‘You shouldn’t have to wait 10 years for a report of this nature,’ he says…”

• In places with scarce prenatal care, midwives deliver maternity solution, By David Wahlberg, November 23, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “The people who live in and around this small city where the foothills meet the plains can count on an important service: The hospital delivers babies. One reason maternity care is available in New Mexico’s San Miguel County, where the poverty rate is nearly twice the national average, is the presence of midwives, who oversee most of the births. Rural hospitals in New Mexico, Wisconsin and across the country have dropped deliveries in recent years because they can’t find enough doctors to do them. But the arrangement in Las Vegas, where only one doctor does obstetrics full time but three nurse midwives attend births, suggests midwives can help maintain maternity care in rural areas…”
• High deductibles mean less medical care for lower-income families, survey finds, By Eryn Brown, November 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Lower-income families with high-deductible insurance policies are more likely to delay or forego medical care because of cost than higher-income families, reported a study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The findings are not surprising. But coming at a time when policymakers are working to keep healthcare costs down and outcomes up — calibrating insurance plans to motivate consumers to be choosier about the medical services they purchase, yet still seek enough care to remain healthy — the results could yield useful ideas, the researchers wrote…”

• Medicaid squeeze: Shrinking federal reimbursements cause doctors to limit care to needy, By Louise Knott Ahern, November 14, 2010, Lansing State Journal: “In a 16-county swath across Northern Michigan, pregnant women have to drive an hour or more to reach a hospital where they can deliver their babies. From Cheboygan to West Branch to Clare, hospitals have been closing their obstetrics units since last summer in a startling domino effect that has health care activists worried about care availability for rural mothers and babies. But they’re equally alarmed about the reason behind the hospital closures. The hospitals blame, in large part, Medicaid. And health care reform advocates say that reflects a broader problem. Since 2002, the state has been chipping away at how much it reimburses doctors and hospitals for treating Medicaid patients to a point where some say they’ve reached a painful bottom-line reality: It has become too expensive to treat poor people…”
• Conservative legislators in Texas seek to opt out of Medicaid, By Dave Montgomery, November 13, 2010, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “A push from conservative legislators for Texas to opt out of Medicaid is stirring alarm among healthcare providers and nursing homes, which say the potential loss of billions of federal dollars could drastically undercut efforts to provide healthcare for the poor. The opt-out plan has quickly emerged as another high-profile topic for the 2011 Legislature, pushed by Gov. Rick Perry and a number of conservative lawmakers who believe that Texas can provide health coverage to the indigent more efficiently with a state-run plan free of federal mandates…”

Nokia taking a rural road to growth, By Kevin O’Brien, November 1, 2010, New York Times: “On Saturday at dawn, hundreds of farmers near Jhansi, an agricultural center in central India, received a succinct but potent text message on their cellphones: the current average wholesale price for 100 kilograms of tomatoes was 600 rupees. In a country where just 7 percent of the population have access to the Internet, such real-time market data is so valuable that the farmers are willing to pay $1.35 a month for the information. What is unusual about the service is the company selling it: Nokia, the Finnish cellphone leader, which unlike its rivals - Samsung, LG, Apple, Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson - is leveraging its size to focus on some of the world’s poorest consumers. Since 2009, 6.3 million people have signed up to pay Nokia for commodity data in India, China and Indonesia. On Tuesday, Nokia plans to announce it is expanding the program, called Life Tools, part of its Ovi mobile services business, to Nigeria…”

Wisconsin’s free health care clinics might emulate Kentucky program, By David Wahlberg, September 27, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “In Lena and Ralph Burnette’s modest but tidy home, Pollyanna Gilbert opened a catalog for a store called Dr. Comfort. It was time for the Burnettes, who have diabetes, to order diabetic shoes. Gilbert is a lay health worker with Kentucky Homeplace, a state-funded program that helps people in a region with the worst life expectancy in the country navigate the complicated health care system. Organizers of Wisconsin’s rural free clinics are paying attention to the program, saying they could develop a similar navigator role if the new health care reform law reduces demand for free care…”

At these clinics, income no object, By David Wahlberg, August 29, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “They assembled in a parking lot on a hot afternoon: diabetics, men with toothaches and chest pain, a woman with torn cartilage, workers whose low wages or job losses left them uninsured. Mary Lyons waited for the free clinic to open so she could refill her nine medications. A diabetic with heart disease and a persistent cough, she works nights cleaning meat processing machines, making enough to get by but not enough to buy insurance, she said. She relies on the clinic for medical care. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without it,’ said Lyons, 61. Free clinics have become a prominent safety net in rural Wisconsin, especially in the southwest part of the state, where clinics have opened in the past four years in Boscobel, Dodgeville and Richland Center. Another, in Prairie du Sac, has been around for more than a decade. Volunteer doctors at the clinics care for the uninsured without charge and offer drugs at deep discounts. The need for free care around the state and the country could drop once the new federal health care reform law fully kicks in by 2014, some say. But Robin Transo, who opened Boscobel’s free clinic in the walk-out basement of a hearing clinic run by her husband, isn’t so sure…”

Rural hospitals face challenges across the state, By Charles Oliver, August 22, 2010, Dalton Daily Citizen: “The economic downturn, cuts in state and federal health care programs, and attempts by private businesses to rein in their own health care costs have combined to create a ‘perfect storm’ that threatens small rural hospitals across the state, according to Jimmy Lewis, CEO of HomeTown Health, which represents 55 rural hospitals in Georgia including Murray Medical Center. ‘We could wake up tomorrow and have 10 hospitals about to close,’ said Lewis. Forty-one Georgia hospitals have closed since 1980, according to the Georgia Hospital Association, many of them small rural hospitals. The problem that rural hospitals face is that their ‘payer mix’ is typically heavy in patients on Medicare and Medicaid and those without insurance…”

Health centers to get $250 million in grants to build clinics, boost services, By Darryl Fears, August 18, 2010, Washington Post: “Health centers across the country are lining up for a shot in the arm from the Obama administration: $250 million in federal grants to build clinics and bolster services at existing clinics for low-income patients such as public housing residents, the homeless, seasonal farmworkers and others who struggle to pay for care. The administration announced last week that the nation’s 1,100 health centers, which operate nearly 8,000 clinics in medically underserved areas, can apply for the grants through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)…”

Reform leads to bigger role for community health centers, By Guy Boulton, June 2, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Community health centers more than doubled in size in the past decade. Now they’ve been given the task of doubling in size yet again. The health centers, often located in low-income urban neighborhoods and rural areas, are an overlooked component of the health care system. But they provide care to nearly 244,000 people statewide, up from 89,392 in 1999. That’s roughly 80,000 people in Milwaukee, or about one in seven residents. They also have been given a crucial role - and with it, a huge increase in funding - to help meet the expected rise in demand that will accompany health care reform. Reform legislation allocated an additional $11 billion for the community health centers over the next five years. To put that in perspective, the federal government now spends $2.2 billion a year on direct support for the centers…”

• The Mississippi Delta’s healthcare blues, By Noam N. Levey, June 3, 2010, Los Angeles Times: ” This crumbling Delta town, set amid cotton fields, abandoned railroad tracks and cypress-studded bayous, is a hard place. So hard that the plaintive sound of a local musician drawing a knife blade across the strings of his guitar gave birth to the blues here a century ago. So hard that a Roman Catholic nun named Anne Brooks has struggled for the last 27 years to keep a medical clinic open for the poor. ‘It’s a pretty hand-to-mouth existence,’ said Brooks, 71, a physician with a wry sensibility and a profane streak. Brooks earned a medical degree at age 44 before coming to the Mississippi Delta to open the Tutwiler Clinic with the blessing of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. She sees the nation’s new healthcare law as a potentially happy turn in a long, hard journey. The measure provides hundreds of billions of dollars to help states expand medical insurance for the poor and pay doctors like Brooks, nearly half of whose patients have no coverage. But there’s a good chance this story will end with another difficult twist in the road for Brooks and for Tutwiler…”
• Miss. looks to Iran for rural health care model, By Sheila Byrd (AP), June 2, 2010, Washington Post: “Scratch-poor towns in the Mississippi Delta once shared more in common with rural Iran - scarce medical supplies, inaccessible health care and high infant mortality rates - than with most of the U.S. Then things in Iran got better. Since the 1980s, rural Iranians have been able to seek treatment at health houses, informal sites set up in small communities as the first stop for medical care, rather than an emergency room. They’re staffed by citizens, not doctors, and the focus is on preventive care. Infant deaths have dropped from 200 per 1,000 births to 26. With the Delta’s rate 10 times worse than Iran’s, a group of volunteers is traveling to Iran this month to get a crash course in how health houses work…”

Too few dentists, too much pain in rural Wisconsin communities, By David Wahlberg, May 23, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “When Rob Homerding’s teeth started to crumble and ache, he tried to find a dentist who would take Medicaid. He and his wife called 20 dentists around Monroe, where they live, but no one would treat him. By the time he saw a dentist two years later, a dozen teeth had to be pulled. His daughter’s friends made fun of his gap-ridden mouth. He stopped smiling. ‘It probably wouldn’t have gotten this bad if I had found a dentist earlier,’ said Homerding, 38, a butcher in New Glarus. Dental care can be difficult to find in rural parts of Wisconsin and throughout the country - especially for people on Medicaid, the state-federal health plan for the poor, and those with no insurance…”

Census matters, especially for rural counties, By William O’Hare, April 29, 2010, Daily Yonder: “We all have heard that results of the U.S. Census are used to determine how billions of dollars in federal grants and loans are distributed around the country. But how much does it matter? Who receives this funding? How much of this federal funding goes to rural areas? And which rural areas benefit most? We can begin to answer some of these questions thanks to some unique research conducted by the Brookings Institution, a non-profit non-partisan research group in Washington, D.C. Scholars there identified nearly $450 billion in federal grants, loans and direct payments that were distributed , in part, based on data from the U.S. Census. They made a special file available to us that shows how those funds were distributed to each county. Most (93%) of these federal funds came out of four program functions: health care (mostly Medicaid); transportation (such as highway planning and construction); income security (such as Section 8 Housing Vouchers); and education, training, employment, and social services (such as Special Education Grants to States). The information is available online here…”

Lawmakers say needs of rural schools are overlooked, By Sam Dillon, March 17, 2010, New York Times: “An Oklahoma senator complained that federal rules on teacher credentials had driven thousands of experienced educators out of rural schools. A North Carolina lawmaker complained that formulas for distributing federal education money favored big-city districts at the expense of poor students in small towns. And a senator from Alaska wanted to know how school-turnaround strategies based on firing ineffective instructors would work in a remote village on the Bering Sea that she said already had tremendous teacher turnover. Lawmakers who represent rural areas told Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a hearing Wednesday that the No Child Left Behind law, as well as the Obama administration’s blueprint for overhauling it, failed to take sufficiently into account the problems of rural schools, and their nine million students…”

• Rural Haiti struggles to absorb displaced, By Deborah Sontag, March 16, 2010, New York Times: “Before the earthquake that changed everything, Chlotilde Pelteau and her husband lived a supremely urban existence. A cosmetics vendor and a mechanic, they both enjoyed a steady clientele and a hectic daily routine, serenaded by the beeping cars and general hubbub of Port-au-Prince. Now, as roosters crow and goats bleat, Ms. Pelteau, 29, toils by day on a craggy hillside in the isolated hamlet of Nan Roc (In the Rocks), which she had abandoned at 14 for a life of greater opportunity. At night, she, her husband and their two children sleep cheek-to-jowl with a dozen relatives in the small mud house where she grew up. ‘With everything destroyed, what could I do but come back?’ said Ms. Pelteau, wearing a floral skirt as she poked corn seeds deep into arid soil unlikely to yield enough food to sustain her rail-thin parents, much less those who fled the shattered capital city to rejoin them…”
• Haitians who fled capital strain impoverished towns in countryside, By William Booth, March 15, 2010, Washington Post: “The earthquake that struck Haiti’s capital city has also jarred the impoverished countryside, sending 600,000 people into the provinces — where locals are now overwhelmed with the task of feeding and sheltering desperate newcomers. Haitian and international aid officials describe the migration as one of the largest and most wrenching in the hemisphere, as internally displaced people stream out of Port-au-Prince and head to struggling provincial towns in the aftermath of the earthquake like civilians fleeing war zones in places such as Rwanda, Kosovo and the Swat Valley in Pakistan. ‘They are everywhere. They are in the town, and they are sleeping in the fields,’ said Gerald Joseph, mayor of Lascahobas, a farming and trading town about three hours north of the capital. ‘Our schools are beyond full now. Our hospital is full. All our houses are full of people. We don’t have an empty house. Where four people were sleeping before, there are now 14…’”

Urban-rural income gap widest since opening-up, By Fu Jing, March 2, 2010, China Daily: “China recorded its widest rural-urban income gap last year since the country launched its reform and opening-up policy in 1978. Think tank researchers warned the gap will continue to widen in the coming years if effective measures to narrow the difference are not implemented soon. The urban per capita net income stood at 17,175 yuan ($2,525) last year, in contrast to 5,153 yuan in the countryside, with the urban-to-rural income ratio being 3.33:1, according to the latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics…”

Database gives snapshot of health in each county, By Lauran Neergaard (AP), February 17, 2010, Washington Post: “Where you live plays a role in your health, and a new report that ranks health factors in each of the nation’s 3,000-plus counties promises to point local policymakers to ways they can help. Looking at each state’s best and worst further illuminates a well-known trend: The least healthy counties tend to be poor and rural, and the healthiest ones tend to be urban or suburban and upper-income. The report - released Wednesday at http://www.countyhealthrankings.org - isn’t the first to examine county-level health. Cancer and access to health care, for example, have long been studied that way. But the new database ties standard measures - general health and the rate of premature death - with more factors that play a role in those outcomes, from smoking, obesity and binge drinking to the unemployment rate, childhood poverty, air pollution and access to grocery stores…”

• The fourth ‘R’: Rural school systems locally face big challenges, By Andrea Castillo, December 8, 2009, Macon Telegraph: “Georgia has the third-highest rural student population in the country, according to a report released by the Rural School and Community Trust in November. More than 500,000 Georgia students attend rural schools, making up more than one-third of the state’s student population, according to the analysis. Georgia’s rural schools tend to have high poverty rates among students and low graduation rates, according to the report. The report was compiled using data from the 2006-07 school year from the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and The New America Foundation. School officials in several Middle Georgia counties say one of the challenges of serving students in rural schools is having a smaller tax base, limiting the academic and cultural resources the schools can offer students. In addition, student poverty - commonly measured through eligibility for free and reduced lunches - affects the students in a number of ways, from reduced student concentration and parent involvement to transportation limitations…”
• Report shows poverty in rural schools, By Paula Wolf, December 6, 2009, Lancaster Sunday News: “Some of the county’s most rural school districts have their share of impoverished children, according to figures released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. The School District of Lancaster, which covers Lancaster city and Lancaster Township, and Columbia Borough School District top the list with 26.9 and 19.6 percent of children ages 5-17 in families in poverty. But in three other districts - Eastern Lancaster County, Solanco and Pequea Valley - at least 13.9 percent of children in that age range live in poverty, exceeding the Lancaster County average of 12.4 percent, the census reported. The numbers, for 2008, are from the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program. They were produced for the U.S. Department of Education to help it enforce the No Child Left Behind Act. The estimates take into account children residing within the school district’s borders - not just those enrolled in district schools…”

• Poverty rate jumps in rural America, By Bill Bishop, November 23, 2009, Daily Yonder: “The difference in poverty rates between rural and urban counties narrowed in the 1990s and through the first few years of this century. From 2003 to 2008, however, poverty rates in rural America jumped. The number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by more than 3.2 million between 2003 and 2008 - and a disproportionate number of those newly poor people live in rural America. Newly released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that 13.2% of Americans were living in poverty in 2008, the highest rate since 1997. In rural counties, however, that rate had climbed to 16.3%. The increase in the number of poor Americans was heavily weighted in rural communities. Rural counties were home to just over 16% of the nation’s population in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But 33% of the increase in the number of poor Americans from ‘03 to ‘08 - more than one million people - was found in rural counties…”
• Poverty figures rise among O.C. schoolchildren, By Scott Martindale, November 29, 2009, Orange County Register: “More than 12 percent of school-age children in Orange County are living in poverty - the highest level since 2005 - with 3.5 times that number receiving free or subsidized meals daily, according to federal poverty data released this month. The number of impoverished children ages 5 to 17 jumped by 6,188 in a single year, to an estimated 67,062 now in Orange County. Meanwhile, a much larger portion of the county’s students - 43 percent - is receiving free or subsidized meals in school…”
• Child poverty highest and rising in rural Oregon, By Betsy Hammond, November 29, 2009, The Oregonian: “Rates of childhood poverty vary tremendously around Oregon, with students in rural areas by far the most likely to live in impoverished households, according to new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. Statewide, the lowest rates are in Lake Oswego, Sherwood, Corbett and West Linn-Wilsonville. Six percent or fewer of school-age children in those districts live in households below the poverty level, the bureau reported this month…”
• Children living in poverty increases in Middle TN, By Janell Ross, November 27, 2009, The Tennessean: “While new U.S. Census Bureau figures show poverty has dropped in most of Middle Tennessee between 2007 and 2008, the area’s children remain disproportionately affected. Poverty for the population overall increased in Davidson and Wilson counties during the period but declined in nearby Rutherford, Sumner and Williamson counties. But children living in almost every part of the region were more likely than other age groups - including senior citizens - to live in poverty…”

Tough choices for feds giving out broadband money, By Joelle Tessler (AP), October 11, 2009, Washington Post: “The federal government will soon start handing out the first $4 billion from a pot of stimulus funds intended to spread high-speed Internet connections to more rural communities, poor neighborhoods and other pockets of the country clamoring for better access. The challenge is that the government has received $28 billion in requests. So the reviewers at the Commerce and Agriculture Departments who will award the broadband money must make hard choices. The 2,200 applications each envision something different - more fiber-optic lines, for example, or computer labs or municipal wireless networks. But they all promise that their proposals will create jobs and bring new economic opportunities…”

Report: High poverty risk for Southern rural kids, By Dionne Walker (AP), October 1, 2009, Miami Herald: ” A child living on a remote Southern farm may be at a higher risk of poverty than counterparts in the city, as schools struggle to develop new opportunities and factories shut down what few jobs are available, according to a new report. The brief by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute found rural children in several Southern states fell into poverty at a faster rate than urban children in 2008. The report examined population numbers released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau, which showed the South remains home to many of the nation’s poor children. ..”

Recession in rural America by the numbers, September 13, 2009, Daily Yonder: “Once a year the folks at the Economic Research Service publish a report on rural America. It’s called Rural America at a Glance and this year’s edition focuses on the recession. No surprise there. Friday we learned that the recession has ‘plunged 2.6 million more Americans into poverty, wiped out the household income gains of an entire decade and pushed the number of people without health insurance up to 46.3 million,’ according to the Washington Post. These latest Census Bureau figures don’t tell us whether the recession is better or worse in rural America. That’s what the ERS tries to do. Here are some excerpts from the full report…”

States weigh in as feds prepare to spend billions on broadband for remote areas, By Daniel C. Vock, August 12, 2009, Stateline.org: “With the state’s help, an increasing number of residents in rural Washington County in Down East Maine are using high-speed Internet connections to run their blueberry farms and lobster fleets, educate their children and communicate with doctors from remote areas. But it’s a large county and its 34,000 residents are spread out: At twice the size of Rhode Island, it takes four hours to cross in a car, and yet there’s only one traffic light. That means it’s slow going for local Internet provider, Axiom Technologies, which is working town by town to set up wireless access points, sometimes serving as few as 12 households per connection…”

With USA in a recession, rural Mexico feels the pain, By Chris Hawley, July 9, 2009, USA Today: “Not long ago, this remote Mexican mountain town was in the middle of a construction boom — as families proudly built their American-style dream homes, using cash sent home by relatives working in the USA.  Work on those houses has stopped, leaving shiny steel rebar jutting awkwardly out of concrete walls all over this town of 4,500. Meanwhile, residents have been forced to cut back on staples such as rice and corn. Eggs, meat and milk are now out of reach for many families…”

UNH study: Rural children more likely living in cohabiting households, July 3, 2009, Foster’s Daily Democrat: “As cohabiting - opposite-sex unmarried partners living together in households - increases nationwide, new data show that the growing rate of children in cohabiting households is most pronounced in rural areas. A new brief from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire analyzes recent U.S. Census Bureau data to explore trends and patterns among children in cohabiting households in rural America…”