From the Editor: The Experiences of Rural Women, Children, and Families of Color in U.S. and Global Communities

f the nearly 6 billion people in the world, 3.14 billion are classified as rural. Many of these people dwell in the hills, mountains, and countrysides of developed and underdeveloped countries, including communities in the United States of America and in the rural enclaves and towns of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, the majority of these individuals and families live on the continents of Asia and Africa, and they live in the worse human conditions imaginable. While there are a few resourceful, rural families whose wealth is tied to landownership, business entrepreneurship, and property holding, the majority of rural individuals are victims of extreme poverty, and political and economic oppression has made it very difficult for them to feed, clothe, and house themselves. Many work for very little and have no real opportunity to increase their earning power. Research shows that, while global income is more than $31 trillion a year, 1.2 billion of the world’s rural population earns less than $1 a day, thereby creating an even larger gap between rich and poor and rural and urban populations. The livelihoods of people living in developing and undeveloped rural areas are strongly dependent on the environment. These people have to make a living from what nature provides in terms of oceans, land, and forests, as they earn their living from fishing, farming, forestry, mining, tourism, or related service industries. Rural populations mostly include a variety of families who are subsistence farmers and landless laborers, as well as femaleheaded households and minority groups who have been pushed onto cheap, marginal land. The majorities of the world’s poorest people who live in rural areas have little in reserve and are not able to help their families do more than simply survive.