Economic Structure and Change in Persistently Low-Income Nonmetro Counties

Some nonmetro areas, largely in the South, remained as severely depressed during the seventies as they had been for decades, despite nonmetro America's general economic gains during the period. These counties differed from other nonmetro counties in location, population characteristics, economic structure, and farm structure. However, some severely depressed counties improved their incomes in the seventies, primarily through nonfarm industries such as services and manufacturing. Mining also provided a large share of the growth in some of the counties with the largest income improvements. Farming helped some counties, but farm income has been too erratic recently to be reliable. Nothing guarantees a county's escape from low-income status; some of those that escaped earlier in the decade returned to low-income status by 1979.