Like the persistent poverty counties, counties that depend on income from government transfer payments have disproportionate shares of people with traits limiting labor force participation.
The transfers-dependent counties had economies heavily based on unearned income from government transfer payments. Such payments include income transferred to eligible recipients under the auspices of Federal, State, and local programs including social security, unemployment, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, government and military pensions, and welfare programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and State and local general assistance programs. The 381 nonmetro counties in the transfers category derived an annualized average of at least 25 percent of personal income from transfers, 1987 to 1989. Income from transfer payments in the transfers counties ranged from 25 percent to 45 percent. By definition, transfers counties are directly affected by changes and variations in Federal, State, and local government transfer programs. For example, the wide State variation in benefit levels for AFDC affects the chances of a county being classified as atransfers-dependent county.
Counties that depend on transfers income are regionally concentrated in parts of the South and Midwest (fig. 21). The majority (64 percent) are in the Southern States. An additional 26 percent are in Midwestern States, and nearly 10 percent are in the Western States. Counties in the transfers group, relative to all-nonmetro counties, tended to be located in more remote locations away from metro areas and to be slightly more sparsely populated. Nearly 70 percent of the counties did not adjoin a metro area, and over half of these were totally rural counties. Transfers counties were less apt to be located in the South and more apt to be located in the Midwest and West than were the persistent poverty counties.
Because of the heavy overlap (233 counties) with persistent poverty counties, the transfers-dependent counties exhibit many of the same demographic and economic traits attributed to the persistent poverty counties. Like the persistent poverty counties, the transfers-dependent counties had populations with disproportionate shares of economically disadvantaged groups, including Blacks, Hispanics, female-headed households, handicapped persons, and undereducated persons including high school dropouts (table 11). Counties averaged a poverty rate of 27.5 percent, only slightly under the poverty rate in persistent poverty counties. Given the general makeup of the populations in many of the transfers-dependent counties, the group had the lowest incomes and highest unemployment of the county types. On average, transfers income made up 29 percent of personal income in the transfers-dependent counties compared with 20.1 percent in all-nonmetro counties. Over 36 percent of households in the transfers group received social security and about 15 percent received some form of public assistance in 1989.
Unlike the persistent poverty counties but in keeping with the large share of transfer payments accounted for by social security and medicare, the population of transfers-dependent counties included a larger share of elderly. Only the farming and retirement counties had proportions of elderly population higher than that for the transfers-dependent counties. Thus, transfers-dependent counties dispoportionately represent areas dependent on assistance to poverty-prone populations and/or areas with high proportions of retired people.
The industrial mix of jobs in transfers-dependent counties generally resembled the mix for all nonmetro counties as of 1989; however, their economies grew more slowly over the 1980's. Overall real earnings declined by 9 percent, the highest loss of any type except the mining group. And the pace of overall job growth in the transfers-dependent counties was much slower than the all nonmetro pace. Services jobs in the transfers-dependent counties grew at a faster rate than overall job growth, but still significantly under the all-nonmetro rate (fig. 22). Furthermore, there was a substantial decline in earnings per job between 1979 and 1989.
Table 11--Transfers-dependent counties: Selected characteristics
All-
Transfers nonmetro
Item Unit counties counties
--------------------------- ------- ------- -------
Counties Number 381 2,276
Population, 1990 Thousands 6,658 50,898
Totally rural, 1993(1,2) Percent 44.7 34.0
Population density, 1990(3,4) Number 29.0 36.3
Population change, 1980-90(4) Percent -.9 .6
Per capita income, 1989(4) Dollars 10.737 13,580
Per capita transfer income,
1989(4) do. 3,096 2,636
Black population, 1990(5) Percent 12.0 8.0
Disabled population, 1990(6) do. 13.7 10.2
Transfers/earned income,
1990(4) Ratio .53 .34
(1) No persons living in towns of 2,500 population or more.
(2) Percentage of counties in group.
(3) Persons per square mile.
(4) Unweighted county averages.
(5) Percent of persons; unweighted county averages.
(6) Persons with a physical or mental health condition
of at least 6 months duration that limited the kind
or amount of work they could do.
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