Wal Mart Creating More Poverty According to New Report

Study finds Wal-Mart contributes to poverty
St. Louis Business Journal

A study focused on the effects of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates found that an estimated 20,000 families nationwide have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., ranked No. 5 on the St. Louis Business Journal's most recent list of the area's largest employers. As of Dec. 31, Wal-Mart employed 13,005 people in the St. Louis metro area.

The study -- Wal-Mart and County-Wide Poverty -- written by Stephan Goetz, a professor of agricultural and regional economics at Pennsylvania State University, and Hema Swaminathan for the International Center for Research on Women, was published in the latest issue of Social Science Quarterly.

Authors, Goetz and Swaminathan write that the presence of Wal-Mart was "unequivocally associated" with smaller reductions in family-poverty rates in counties nationwide during the 1990s relative to places that had no stores.

Read full article here...