The Road to Poverty The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia [Paperback]

Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities.Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay County, an especially po or section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. This book makes an important contribution to basic research on inequality pointing to the shortcomings of treating symptomatic problems of low income, while failing to address systemic ones at a time when American policymakers are struggling to design and implement effective programs to move people from welfare to work.Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay County, an especially po or section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. This book makes an important contribution to basic research on inequality pointing to the shortcomings of treating symptomatic problems of low income, while failing to address systemic ones at a time when American policymakers are struggling to design and implement effective programs to move people from welfare to work.Intended for social scientists, historians, and readers interested in social change and social poverty, this book examines the roots of entrenched poverty in Appalachia. It is both a social history of the creation of chronic poverty (and wealth) in Clay County, KY and an explication of how economic markets, cultural strategies, and the state interact to shape local society. By linking a longitudinal study of a single place to broader understandings of the historical development of the capitalist world system, this book contributes to policy discussions of the underlying causes of persistent rural poverty and reasons for the chronic failure of governmental programs to alleviate such poverty. In doing this study the authors have assembled probably the longest running set of longitudinal data currently available on anlS@