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Traditional manufacturing industries in rural America, including meat processing and carpet manufacturing, increasingly employ Hispanic immigrants. Many of these workers are unauthorized, often young men from rural areas of Mexico with less than 10 years education and little or no English but with family and friends already employed in these high-turnover jobs to provide assistance with travel to the US and, upon arrival, employment and housing.

Migrants are attracted to opportunity. There are 3,141 US counties and 2,297 were classified as nonmetro by the Office of Management and Budget as of 2002, which means they do not have an urbanized area of 50,000 or more plus surrounding counties linked by commuting patterns, the definition of a metro county. The 3.2 million rural Hispanics in 2000 were less than six percent of the 56 million nonmetro residents in 2000, but they accounted for 25 percent of nonmetro population growth in the 1990s (the 32 million metro Hispanics were about 14 percent of the 225 million metro residents).

Among nonmetro counties, the 360 whose Hispanic populations grew fastest in the 1990s are mostly in the Midwest and Southeast, especially those towns that have beef and poultry processing plants, such as Storm Lake, Iowa and Siler City, North Carolina. Rapid growth in nonmetro Hispanic populations meant that, by 2000, over half of nonmetro Hispanics were living outside the five traditional states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. As Hispanics spread beyond these traditional rural gateways, persisting unemployment and poverty may spread with them if they are employed in industries that do not allow them to work their way out of poverty.

Many of these counties had low unemployment and experienced rapid population growth in the 1990s, suggesting that Hispanic immigrants were drawn to areas offering jobs that may have been shunned by local residents who found more attractive or remunerative opportunities.

However, Hispanics in nonmetro "rapid Hispanic growth" counties-- half of whom were born abroad-- were often poor in 2000, largely because of relatively low wages and relatively larger families, opening a gap of $8,600 a year between non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics, up from $4,000 in 1990. There is also a gap between non-Hispanic White and Hispanic per capita incomes in the 750 traditional Hispanic counties based mostly in the Southwest, but it did not widen as much.

In sum, Midwestern and southeastern nonmetro counties that attracted large numbers of Hispanic immigrants in the 1990s also had rising poverty among Hispanics. These "new Hispanic destinations" traditionally had lower unemployment rates and lower Hispanic poverty rates than traditional Hispanic nonmetro counties, suggesting that they may develop the same structural poverty features of the traditional Hispanic counties where non-Hispanic whites have significantly higher incomes.

It appears unlikely that Hispanics are directly displacing non-Hispanics in nonmetro Hispanic growth areas, but their presence may increase demands for social services. For example, there is no evidence that emergency room visits rose disproportionately faster in nonmetro counties with faster Hispanic growth, but there were often dramatic increases in K-12 student growth, which may increase challenges facing schools seeking to satisfy No Child Left Behind testing standards. In some schools, the share of Hispanic children rose from less than five percent in 1990 to over 50 percent by 2000.

In addition to schools, housing markets are affected by rapid Hispanic population growth. About a quarter of nonmetro residents are renters, paying an average of $400 a month in 2000, but over 40 percent of Hispanics in the nonmetro counties attracting Hispanics are renters, perhaps because they are remitting funds to build houses in Mexico.

Rural Poverty. Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards in summer 2005 called persisting poverty "one of the great moral issues in America today," and plans to speak on college campuses around the US to enlist students in a new anti-poverty campaign. Edwards heads the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina.

There were 72 million US children under 18 in 2000, and their poverty rate, 18 percent, was higher than the general poverty rate, 12 percent. There were 11 million poor children in metro areas and 2.7 million in nonmetro areas, and 750 nonmetro counties had child poverty rates above 20 percent. About half of the metro and nonmetro poor children were in households receiving Food Stamps, but only 10 percent of nonmetro poor children, compared to 17 percent of metro poor children, received TANF cash assistance.

About 45 percent of nonmetro children are in the south, where counties tend to be small, and another 30 percent are in the Midwest. Nonmetro children are 80 percent white, and about 10 percent each were Black and Hispanic.

One reason for rural poverty is that nonmetro residents have less education. About 20 percent of metro workers were in so-called knowledge occupations in 2000, compared to 15 percent of nonmetro residents, and within knowledge occupations, a higher percentage of metro workers had at least college degrees.

Indian casino revenues reached $19 billion across the US in 2004, equivalent of two thirds of the $28 billion of the 443 commercial casinos. Some 228 tribes operated 405 casinos in 30 states in 2004.

Kandel, William and Emilio Parrado. 2005. Hispanic Population Growth, Age Composition Shifts, and Public Policy Impacts in Nonmetro Counties. W. Kandel and D. Brown. Eds. 2005. Population Change and Rural Society. Berlin: Springer.