After the dissolution of the tribal government of the Cherokee Nation in the 1900s and the death of William Charles Rogers in 1917, the Federal government began to appoint chiefs to the Cherokee Nation in 1919.
At the same time, the share of the population in the nationâs urban areas increased from 70% to 81% over that 50-year period. And much of the South still struggles with poverty. Of the 16 Southern states, only Maryland and Delaware had a poverty rate below the national average in 1960. Among the 14 Southern states with poverty rates higher than the U.S. average that year, only Virginiaâs had dropped below the national mark by 2010. Over the past 50 years, the poor have increasingly lived in the 20 most populous counties.
In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples. Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time.At 17.9%, the Southâs poverty rate was far above other regions.n 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nationâs poor people; though the Southâs poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).