Income fluctuations cause low-income families to cycle in and out of eligibility for food assistance. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. households with children experienced at least one monthly income change in the late 1990s that put them above or below the eligibility criteria for many programs....

Over a third of nonmetropolitan counties lost more than 10 percent of their population over the past 20 years through net outmigration. Poverty and low education account for the high net outmigration in some of these counties, but most are relatively prosperous. Their outmigration is related to...