My research collaboration with Mark Rank has demonstrated that poverty in post-industrial society cuts across race, gender, age, and social class categories. Existing anti-poverty programs, however, are designed around assumptions based in an industrial society where poverty primarily affects specific groups. New York's communities will therefore require new approaches to deal with new realities.

Poverty is a fundamental problem for both the "Quality of Life for Individuals and Families" and "Community and Economic Vitality." Research has demonstrated that poverty is deleterious to health, family well-being, and childhood educational achievement. Poverty divides communities, undermines governance, and degrades economic vitality.
Poverty is expected to increase or remain level in New York state over the next five years due to global economic trends and the national policy trend of reduced funding for most anti-poverty programs. Thus communities will need new management strategies to effectively contain and fight growing poverty in the face of fewer anti-poverty resources.
Longitudinal research conducted by my Ph.D. student found that the risk of poverty increased during the 1990s across all ages except for those over 65. Even though this increased risk is consistent with a number of social and economic indicators, for technical reasons it is not manifest in government poverty statistics, and is therefore hidden from policy leaders and from the general public. Government policy is abandoning traditional anti-poverty programs in favor of market policies and the Earned Income Tax Credit. In addition, rural communities were not given voice in policy deliberations related to poverty policy, and for structural and policy reasons many rural places are disproportionately at-risk of poverty surges. When considering all of this in relation to international and national economic trends, I conclude there are positive odds that widespread poverty will become a "perfect storm" in American society, especially for a subset of vulnerable rural communities of the type that characterize upstate New York. To the extent this conclusion is correct, now is an excellent moment to revitalize educational programming and policy discussions about poverty.

I am currently working to 1) disseminate the research, and 2) am proposing to conduct policy research at the community level. I believe that community level research is appropriate due to the unlikely prospect of policy innovation at higher levels of government. A paper is currently under review at the journal Demography, and I provided a general description of the findings to the New York Times ("America`s `Near Poor` Are Increasingly at Economic Risk, Experts Say," May 8, 2006, Section A, Page 14). I have two research proposals under review that explore ways that New York communities can seek to reduce poverty in ways the integrate the poor into community institutions. The research involves collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension educators in six counties, as well as with Catholic Charities of Steuben County.

The impact of this effort is to raise awareness nationally (via the New York Times article) and regionally (via research collaborations). This is a long range effort that will need some start up time to get underway and achieve major impact. The final impact should be measurable in mortality and morbidity changes since poverty is a strong negative predictor of health and life expectancy.

poverty

• Brian T. Gilchrist (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Rosemary Hartman (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Elizabeth M. Higgins (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Phyllis L. Morena (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Nancy A Welch (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Bonnie S. Collins (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Richard D. Sloman (Cornell Cooperative Extension)
• Jessica Brown (Workers Rights Center)
• Rev. LeRoy Mast (Catholic Charities of Steuben County)