A Top Priority: Family Planning Assistance for Rural America
T HE American people have been concerned about rural poverty for some time. As a nation, we took our first significant actions to correct the rural poverty situation in the 1860's [11, p. 1352]. One hundred and ten years later we find the problems are still with us. Through the years our farm programs have not been successful in eliminating the causes of rural poverty. Rural America has had a high rate of human fertility when compared with the urban sector. In 1960 the rural farm fertility rate for all women ever married was 50 percent higher than for women in urbanized areas. In the younger age group, 20 to 24 years, rural farm women had 1.29 children for every one born to urban women [16, p. 359]. Recently there have been serious discussions suggesting that this high rate of fertility is contributing significantly to the continuing economic plight of rural people. It is the purpose of this paper to point out the need for continuing discussion, study, and, eventually, adoption of a national family planning assistance program for the rural poor. The time has come to recognize that high fertility in rural America only magnifies the traditional indicators of rural poverty such as low income, inadequate educational opportunity, and insufficient health care. It is time to recognize the evidence that rural parents do want smaller families.
The Economic Dimensions Of Rural Poverty
The farm sector of the United States is fast approaching its equilibrium asymptote in relation to the rest of the economy. The facts are simple and even startling to one who last looked at them five years ago. By 1967, as Table 1 shows, the one million successful American farms produced all but 15 percent of the output and wound up with a total family income averaging $14,000. Both the intermediate group (sales $2,500-10,000) and the non-commercial group (sales less than $2,500) were averaging nearly $7,000 per farm family from all sources. It is very clear that these two groups, comprising over 2 million farms are no longer primarily engaged in farming. In seven years, the intermediate group switched its income dependence from farm to non-farm income, and the non-commercial group did more than twice as well as before in non-farm income. Moreover, even the lower end of the farm income distribution is no longer in dire poverty; these families prudently substitute enough non-farm income to replace on-farm opportunities. It should also be noted that in the whole of farming, non-farm sources of income are just as important as farm sources.
Interregional Income Differences
In a recent issue of this Journal, two important contributions to the theory and fact of Southern economic development appeared side by side. Rufus B. Hughes, Jr. argued that "a free market system of organization, by nature, causes advanced regions (whatever the original cause for advance) to grow, at least in part, at the expense of other regions. Consequently, once income differences emerge they tend to become self-perpetuating .... 1 In the preceding article, Stephen L. McDonald analyzed changes in population and industrial structure underlying what he characterized, on the contrary, as "... the South's recent progress toward income parity .... 2 This conclusion was based on the evidence of recent trends in the ratio of personal income per capita in the South to that in the non-South. R. A. Easterlin reached the same conclusion for all regions of the nation by considering long-term changes in the relative standing of individual states.3