Wonderment Wednesday: Hitting it BIG

Happy Wednesday everyone! Unless you have not been reading the news, you might have heard that the lottery has now grown to $1.3 Billion. I don't know about you, but I have sold all belongings, including my entire collectible marble set. I'm going to use all that money, including my life savings, just for just an infinitesimal chance at winning the Powerball.

What do I plan to do with the winnings? Buy an alpaca farm of course. The internet on the other hand is convinced that with the winnings alone could solve U.S. poverty (hint: do the math and it doesn't). While it may not be true, it does allow us to segue into today's Wonderment Wednesday topic on

5 Facts About Rural Poverty

1. The More Rural A County Is, The More Likely The Residence Live in Poverty
In a report written by Charity Moore, PhD, it ventured into the concept of whether or not rurality had an effect on poverty. What the study found was as rurality increase, the likelihood of poverty increased as well.

2. A Disproportionate Amount Of Minorities Live In Poverty
In the same report as before, it also looked at how rurality effected minority children. Unfortunately, rural minority children were much more likely to be in poverty than White rural children.

3. Rural Poverty Has High Rates Of Obesity
A study written by Kevin J. Bennett, PhD looked at the relationship of obesity among resident in rural counties. What made this study significant was that it broke up rurality by Urban, Rural, and Rural Persistent Poverty counties. By breaking the analysis like so, we find that residents in Rural Persistent Poverty counties had higher rates of obesity than Rural and Urban counties.

4. People In Poverty Are Much More Likely To Have Tooth Loss 
In a study Jordan Mitchell, PhD, it looked at whether poverty in rural area had an effect on tooth loss. During the course of the study, it found that people that lived in poverty were much more likely to have tooth loss. Most importantly, the study highlighted that socioeconomic-level factors played a significant role in the likeliness of tooth loss.

5. Parental Stress Are Effected By Poverty
The report that looked into poverty by Charity Moore, PhD also looked into how poverty effected parental stress levels of parents. In general, populations were much more likely to have parental stress the lower the income. However, looking deeper into the information, minority populations were found to have higher stress levels than Whites when it came to parental stress.

In the meantime, remember to give a nice tap on that subscribe button to the very bottom or top left hand side of this page to read more about the South Carolina Rural Health Research Center.We will be taking the next few weeks off, so until next time, take care!

-Matt

Note: SCRHRC does not condone the Powerball or gambling of any sort.

References
Moore C, Probst JC, Tompkin M, Cuffe S, Brock- Martin A. Depression in Rural Populations: Prevalence, Effects on Life Quality, and Treatment-Seeking Behavior. May 2005
Mitchell J, Bennett K, Brock-Martin A. Edentulism in high poverty rural counties. J Rural Health. 2013 Winter:29(1):30-8.   
Bennett KJ, Probst JC, Pumkam C. (2011). Obesity among working age adults: The role of county-level persistent poverty in rural disparities. Health Place. Jun 10.