Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

2-21-2009

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Public Law & Legal Theory

Abstract

This paper is the last in a sixpart series addressing rural discrimination across a broad spectrum of issues Written in connection with and presented at the Law Poverty and Economic Inequality Conference this final article offers a limited initial foray into examining ruralism on a global stage set in the specific context of rural poverty Developing solutions to rural poverty is particularly challenging for two primary reasons the lack of homogeneity across rural areas and discrimination against rural areas In developing policies and programs to combat rural poverty the temptation is to strive for an overarching planone plan applied consistently across all rural areas However rural poverty lacks those unifying characteristics that would permit the application of a single program on a worldwide basis or in the case of the United States even on a nationwide basis The lack of homogeneity across rural areas guarantees that a onesizefitsall approach to rural poverty will necessarily fail Accordingly lawmakers and policymakers must look more specifically at the geographical areas to be served by rural poverty policies and programs to ensure that such policies and programs are not based on inaccurate or inadequate foundations and assumptions To lawmakers and policymakers who tend to seek generalities and commonality in developing laws policies and programs a geographyspecific approach to rural poverty sounds both counterintuitive and unfair Geographyspecific approaches by definition do not have general applicability but instead turn on location Although lawmakers regularly tuck geographyspecific provisions into bills the notion of granting benefits to some places and not to others is often condemned as unfair favoritism In addition in at least some instances rural discrimination comes into play whether intentional or inadvertent The lack of unfettered resources means that government funding is always a matter of setting priorities and rural poverty even severe rural poverty is not always seen as a priority To be sure governments have the power to abandon any attempts at ameliorating rural poverty But to the extent that governments or other entities undertake to address rural poverty their attempts will continue to fail until the realities of lack of rural homogeneity and rural discrimination are acknowledged and taken into account in creating programs and policies

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