The Spatial Convergence of Environmental and Demographic Variables in Poverty Landscapes

THE SPATIAL CONVERGENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES IN POVERTY LANDSCAPES Gary L. Thompson* Through the 1960's, poverty became a persistent theme in social research, but despite clear spatial implications, few geographers addressed this troublesome aspect of the human situation. This reluctance among geographers to plunge into the study of poverty is not difficult to understand. The poverty concept is essentially negative, implying a dearth or an absence of some aspect of well being—economic, intellectual, nutritional, or emotional. Also, the condition is constantly being redefined through time as life styles change, and in space the definition may vary from region to region, from culture to culture, depending on local levels of material prosperity. (1) In fact, a broadly accepted definition of poverty for a single point in time or space has yet to be formulated. This essay attempts to outline in what many will consider audaciously broad strokes the proposition that spatial clusters of poverty in the United States are associated with distinct concentrations of other variables , some of which may be classed as environmental, others demographic . This convergence of poverty-related variables forms the basis of the suggestion that it may be possible to identify a system of interacting components in a spatial field referred to as a "poverty landscape." Further, these propositions are compared to the "culture of poverty" concept outlined by Oscar Lewis. The objectives of this study are quite limited and are oriented more toward raising the subject for discussion than toward providing a succinct, encompassing statement of the geographic nature and causes of poverty. The complexity of the ill-defined condition continues to defy precise conceptualization. A wide variety of factors have been shown to be associated with low income groups. Morrill summarizes a number of such factors including resources, agglomerative forces, relative location, the immobility of rural populations, a low demand for the products of a region's industries, low labor productivity, and discrimination against minorities. (2) Certainly all these factors are pertinent in explaining spatial variation in economic prosperity, but it is also important to understand that poverty is a manyfaceted condition and that in afflicted regions, economic stagnation is only one part of the total prism. What this means is that an area of chronically low incomes is also likely to be an area of old-aged popu- *Dr. Thompson is assistant professor of geography at the University of Oklahoma. The paper was accepted for publication in October 1971. Vol. XII, No. 1 15 lation, low educational achievement, minority group clustering, high birth rates, poor health, high tenancy rates, social disorganization, individual apathy, and a poor resource base plus a multitude of other attributes. The strength of a few such associations will be illustrated subsequently. The exact causal linkages (forcings) among the variables which are found converged in poverty areas are extremely difficult to understand. What, for example, is the exact nature of the association between poor housing and high crime rates in urban ghettoes? Nevertheless, if such a convergence of interrelated variables exists, then the economist Oscar Ornati must be correct when he writes that "poverty, without doubt, has a geographic dimension." (3) In order to understand this geographic dimension, it is first necessary to investigate the similarities of poverty landscapes as a distinct type of human occupance region. If similar characteristics can be recognized among various poverty regions, it should be possible to understand the internal dynamics of such regions. A spatial taxonomy of poverty landscapes might also be developed on the basis of similarities and differences . This paper addresses only the former of these two procedural approaches—that is, the similarities of poverty regions. ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES. Normally, the term environment suggests climate, soils, vegetation, or landforms in geographic explanation . The classification systems of physical geography, however, are of limited use in explaining a human condition such as poverty. In a social geographical context, the term environment should refer to the total milieu, human and physical, with which groups of individuals must cope. Thus, a remote mountainous location might be one aspect of a poverty environment, but so could unsanitary living conditions, high crime rates, and racial discrimination. (4) Defined in these terms, environmental variables previously reported to...