REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN FAMILY POVERTY

Poverty rates vary considerably over regions, as do the demographic ch aracteristics of the poor, but why the extent of poverty varies as muc h as it does across different regions of the country is not fully unde rstood. This is an unfortunate gap in our knowledge, since it is diffi cult to analyze how recent changes in federal antipoverty policy will affect the regional distribution of poverty without a better understan ding of current regional differences in the poverty rate. The main goa l of this article is to shed some Light on why poverty rates vary as m uch as they do in different areas. The analysis shows that much of the regional variation in poverty rates can be accounted for by differenc es across regions in the distribution of potential family earnings: wh at families could be expected to earn if all their adult members worke d full-time, relative to the poverty threshold for the family. Other f actors, such as unemployment and whether the family recently immigrate d to the United States, also are important in determining the poverty status of individual families, but play a somewhat smaller role than e arnings capacity in explaining regional differences in poverty rates.