An Invited conference lifting up multidisciplinary social science research on rural poverty in the United States on the 50thAnniversary of the 1967 report of the President’s National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty entitled The People Left Behind. This report focused attention on the economic and social conditions of the 14 million rural people living in poverty, and called for policies that would improve opportunity and living conditions in rural America.
The conference will bring together leading and emerging scholars to explore historical and contemporary rural poverty issues and examine strategies to reduce poverty. It will also engage these scholars in developing a wide-ranging research agenda for rigorous research that will improve economic opportunity and the well-being of low-income people in rural and small town America.
Scholars were invited to submit abstracts for papers that
- examine the geography of U.S. poverty and opportunity
- explore the challenges that have affected the nation’s progress in reducing rural poverty over the past half century
- examine the nation’s policies and programs to reduce rural poverty, assessing the effectiveness of poverty-reducing strategies, policies and programs in rural areas, or exploring regional innovations in policy
Examples of relevant issues include (but are not limited to) rural economic development, new immigrants, service provision in rural areas, rural labor mobility, local politics of inequality, persistent poverty, and intergenerational economic mobility. We encourage submissions from early-career scholars and scholars from underrepresented populations. Limited travel funds will be available for one conference presenter per accepted paper.
The conference was organized and sponsored by the Rural Policy Research Institute at University of Iowa, the Institute for Research on Poverty at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research with major funding from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture,USDA Rural Development, Annie E.Casey Foundation, and partner NACo National Association of Counties.
