The Daily Yonder blog reported Jan. 8 that "the percentage of people living in poverty increased from 15.8 percent of those living in rural counties in 2007, before the recession began, to 18.3 percent in 2011."
All of RCAP's work is carried out in rural communities, and most of the communities RCAP works with are classified as low-income. Government definitions and measures of low incomes and poverty are regularly used to determine a community's eligibility for grants and loans for water and wastewater projects. Income level is also a major factor in the ability of a community's residents to pay for the essential utilities of drinking water and wastewater treatment.
Read about the Daily Yonder's analysis of poverty in the United States [1]