In a newly released study, social scientists have discovered that one of the most persistently poor regions in the nation -- a 242-county area stretching from Virginia to Mississippi -- has been left out of comprehensive plans that would make things better.

In response to the seemingly intractable problem of persistent poverty in the area, the study advocates larger investments in human resources -- namely education, job training, health care and other community services. It also calls for forming a federal commission to coordinate an effective regional development effort that concentrates on human resource development plus economic development and infrastructure in the afflicted region.

Dr. Ron Wimberley, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of sociology at North Carolina State University and one of the nation's foremost authorities on the rural South and the Black Belt region, contributed to the study, which is entitled "Dismantling Persistent Poverty in the Southeastern United States."

Along with an alarmingly high rate of persistent poverty -- one out of five people is poor and one out of four children is poor -- the region shares social ills such as higher rates of unemployment and disease, lower birth weights in babies, and lower percentages of high school graduates. The per capita income of the region is nearly $5,500 less than the national average. About 7.5 million people live in the area, the study finds.

Researchers did not examine counties that are already part of a regional commission, such as the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) or the Delta Regional Authority, because those counties have a mechanism to effect change already in place. "This study finds the poor places that have been left out by other regional efforts," Wimberley said. A listing of the 242 counties in the seven states studied, as well as the rest of the report, can be accessed at http://www.cviog.uga.edu/poverty/final/report.pdf.

The study was commissioned by U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) and published by the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government.

The study emphasizes a concentrated effort that invests in educating people and growing a healthy and well-trained workforce, coupled with economic development investments in small businesses and the creation of local jobs alongside improvement to infrastructure like transportation and housing.

Wimberley says that human-resource development, economic development and infrastructure development are all parts of the equation to slow poverty and its effects. He notes that piecemeal efforts have been put in place to work on one or two of these factors at a time, especially -- most recently -- economic and infrastructure development. By themselves, these efforts usually have limited success, he says.

"A comprehensive regional plan that brings together human resource development, economic development and infrastructure development is needed rather than a single-shot approach," Wimberley says. "Bricks and mortar can't make magic alone."

The report also suggests using successful regional commissions like the ARC as a guide to create a federal commission with the charge of eradicating the forces that contribute to persistent poverty. In the past 30 years the ARC, which stretches from New York to Mississippi, has helped cut its regional poverty rate in half and developed a network of 400 primary health care facilities, among other successes.

To track persistent poverty, the study examined census records from 1980, 1990 and 2000, and identified counties across the Southeast that were the poorest in both 2000 and either 1980 or 1990. That means that a relatively high percentage of a county's citizens were below the poverty line, which was defined as a single person with an income of less than $8,667 in 1999, or a family of four with a 1999 income of less than $17,029.

Much of the area looked at in this report, Wimberley says, is part of the Black Belt, which he and colleague Dr. Libby Morris of the University of Georgia studied in the 1990s. Their work, "The Southern Black Belt: A National Perspective," focused on the people and demographics of that area.

In contrast, the persistent poverty report focuses mostly on conditions and ways of moving forward to solve the problems, Wimberley says. "We need to invest in these places, or they'll continue to be a drain on our future," he said. "Even with all the technical, social, transportation and communication improvements over the years, the Southeast is still the largest poor region in the United States, and that should not be."

Wimberley says that this study makes an attempt to find solutions to problems that have been taken for granted over the years. "This report goes beyond any other report I've seen because it sets human and community development priorities to solve problems of poverty," Wimberley says. He calls the area of persistent poverty "the most longstanding failure of the American dream."