LINCOLN, Neb.—Rural Nebraska residents have put off going to the doctor, paid basic bills with credit cards and even resorted to bartering to weather the economy, according to results of an annual poll released Monday.
Forty-five percent of Nebraska Rural Poll respondents with household incomes of less than $40,000 said they delayed medical services to save money. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents with incomes of less than $20,000 reported using credit cards to pay routine bills.
“That is a real red flag,” said Bruce Johnson, an agricultural economist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which conducted the poll. “You can only do that so long and dig yourself into a deeper hole.”
Findings were based on more than 2,850 responses from people in the state’s 84 rural counties. Conducted in March and April by mail, the poll focused on how rural Nebraska residents have been affected by the recession and what changes they’ve made to cope. Its margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
One response has been to rely more on old-fashioned trading of work, services and materials—and less on cash—to get by.
Thirty-four percent of respondents said they bartered in the last year. Bartering’s use in Nebraska mirrors what is happening nationally as more people find creative ways to make ends meet: Early this year online marketplace Craigslist said bartering ads on its Web site had increased about 100 percent since 2008.
Relying less on dollars and cents may stem from the fact that many rural residents find themselves working less at steady jobs. About 35 percent of poll respondents reported that their employers reduced their regular or overtime hours, and 27 percent said a member of their household took on an additional job.
“There’s a lot of concern,” said Randy Cantrell, a rural sociologist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “People are making or planning to make adaptations” to survive economically.
More than a third of poll respondents said they were worried about being able to pay their bills.
The most recent unemployment statistics show that Nebraska is tied with North Dakota for the lowest unemployment rate in the country—4.4 percent. Yet 11 percent of poll respondents said someone in their household lost a job because of cutbacks or layoffs, with workers in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing hit especially hard.
Nearly 60 percent of respondents who worked in those fields reported that their regular or overtime hours were reduced. More than half of rural business owners said they lost money. Three-quarters of all poll respondents said they suffered investment losses.
“It’s pretty significant that virtually everybody shows investment losses,” said Brad Lubben, a public-policy specialist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Unlike the Great Depression, Main Street is invested in Wall Street. What happens nationally and globally does affect rural Nebraska.”
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