The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia

Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay County, an especially poor section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. The authors uncover the systemic problems and patterns of low income by tracing its socio-cultural, economic, and political development of Clay County from its earliest non-native settlement and agricultural development, to the advent of the coal industry, to the present day. This study of the long-term, institutional basis of rural poverty contains some fascinating, new local historical detail, based upon the authors' meticulous archival research. 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.