Household Poverty in Rural and Metropolitan‐Core Areas of the United States¹

Urban poverty and rural development literatures are used to identify the determinants of poverty, resulting in the hypothesis that controlling for household and contextual‐level variables would reduce metropolitan (metro) core versus rural differences in the likelihood of poverty. Modeling data from the 1985 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, rural households have the highest probability of poverty followed by the metro core. Both household and contextual factors were important determinants of the chances of household poverty. However, controlling for these determinants failed to eliminate the greater likelihood of rural versus metro‐core poverty. Findings indicate the need for new directions in future poverty research and a reconsideration of the importance of space in sociological theory.