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Population Change and Rural SocietyChanging Fortunes

Population Change and Rural Society: Changing Fortunes CHAPTER 6 Poverty in Rural America LEIF JENSEN, STEPHAN J. GOETZ, AND HEMA SWAMINATHAN INTRODUCTION Go to the website for the Tunica County, Mississippi Chamber of Com- merce, and the clues are pretty obvious. The clickable icons show that shopping can be done at the “Casino Factory Shoppes,” the logo for which features three bright red cherries in a row, and a click on a pair of dice (showing 6 and 5) will take you to opportunities for “gaming and tourism.” It turns out that of all non- metropolitan (nonmetro) counties in the contiguous United States, Tunica County had the fastest declining poverty rate over the 1990s. A local official, in response to our question about why that might be, responded: In 1991 the state authorized gaming, and Tunica is a gaming community. We’re just south of Memphis and bring in people from a three-state area. This was an extremely poor county prior to gaming, and we were very far behind in terms of infrastructure. But we’ve had wise leadership, and gaming revenue has been reinvested into the county’s roads and such. We created 14,000 jobs and have nine casinos. We used to be a drain on the state’s http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Population Change and Rural SocietyChanging Fortunes

Part of the The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis Book Series (volume 16)
Editors: Kandel, William A.; Brown, David L.
Jensen, Leif; Goetz, Stephan J.; Swaminathan, Hema
Population Change and Rural Society — Jan 1, 2006
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References (1)

  • D.E. Albrecht (2000)

    87

    Rural Sociology, 63

Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Copyright
© Springer 2006
ISBN
978-1-4020-3911-9
Pages
131 –152
DOI
10.1007/1-4020-3902-6_6
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

CHAPTER 6 Poverty in Rural America LEIF JENSEN, STEPHAN J. GOETZ, AND HEMA SWAMINATHAN INTRODUCTION Go to the website for the Tunica County, Mississippi Chamber of Com- merce, and the clues are pretty obvious. The clickable icons show that shopping can be done at the “Casino Factory Shoppes,” the logo for which features three bright red cherries in a row, and a click on a pair of dice (showing 6 and 5) will take you to opportunities for “gaming and tourism.” It turns out that of all non- metropolitan (nonmetro) counties in the contiguous United States, Tunica County had the fastest declining poverty rate over the 1990s. A local official, in response to our question about why that might be, responded: In 1991 the state authorized gaming, and Tunica is a gaming community. We’re just south of Memphis and bring in people from a three-state area. This was an extremely poor county prior to gaming, and we were very far behind in terms of infrastructure. But we’ve had wise leadership, and gaming revenue has been reinvested into the county’s roads and such. We created 14,000 jobs and have nine casinos. We used to be a drain on the state’s

Published: Jan 1, 2006

Keywords: Social Capital; Poverty Rate; North American Free Trade Agreement; Rural Poverty; Metro Area

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