ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the breadth and characteristics of the human dimension of the rural South in crisis. While many of the socioeconomic forces shaping the current situation are new and may not be directly comparable with the past, much of the human dimensions of the present situation in the rural South were familiar to earlier generations. The human dimension is described from several vantage points. The first and most obvious is poverty. The most available and general measure of social well-being is poverty, usually measured as a percentage of a population living at or below the poverty level. Rural poverty is heavily concentrated in the South. A key factor facilitating the persistence of a very large unskilled and semi-skilled labor force in the rural South has been the inability for public education systems to adequately train its disadvantaged citizens.
