Share of high-poverty counties: Comparing rural (nonmetro) counties with 20 percent or more employment in meatpacking to all other rural counties in the United States

Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, the 49 rural meatpacking-dependent counties were facing a comparatively high prevalence of poverty. The ERS Rural Atlas defines high-poverty counties as those that have poverty rates of 20 percent or higher, using the 2014–2018 five-year estimates of the American Community Survey. Using this definition, 34.7 percent of these meatpacking-dependent counties were defined as high-poverty counties, compared with 26.2 percent in all other rural counties in the country.

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