BOOK REVIEWS THE GEOGRAPHY OF AMERICAN POVERTY:IS THERE A NEED FOR PLACE-BASED POLICIES? Mark D. Partridge and Dan S. Rickman, Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. 2006. 354 pp. $56.00. ISBN 10-0-88099-287-50. Mark Partridge and Dan Rickman provide a carefully crafted multi-layered answer to the question posed in the subtitle of this book. Based on their thorough econometric analysis of the relative importance of spatial, demographic, and economic factors in explaining poverty rates at the state and county level, they argue that, yes, there is a need for place-based anti-poverty policies, particularly efforts to generate local job growth. Chapter 1 briefly recounts national trends in poverty over the past half century, and, after reviewing arguments about why society should care about poverty, articulates the central purposes of the book: exploring the “relative merits of place-based and person-based policies for evening out spatial concen- trations of poverty” and considering “the possibility that local economic growth, using place-based employment supports, may be a needed tool for reducing poverty” (p. 2). Chapter 2 provides a good introduction to the geography of poverty. Using a series of judiciously selected tables, maps, and graphs, they show the wide variation in poverty rates across space, the geographic clustering of persistent poverty counties, and the interaction of spatial and demographic variations in poverty. Partridge and Rickman review the familiar patterns of poverty rates and trends across states. Poverty is generally higher in the South and lower in the Midwest. It decreased during the 1990s in the South and increased in the West and Northeast, and decreased more in high poverty states and in states with greater declines in unemployment. At the county level, they find enormous diversity in poverty rates and persistent pockets of deep poverty in parts of the South, Appalachia, the Rio Grande valley, and many Western tribal counties. The highest poverty rates are found in large metro core counties and remote non-metro counties. But while remote non-metro counties saw large declines in poverty over the 1990s, large metro and metro core counties saw little or no improvements. Anyone who has struggled with the issue of whether anti-poverty policies need to be tailored to the needs of particular places should read Chapter 3. It offers a compelling statement of the theoretical premise underlying place-based policy. The premise is that regional labor markets are not in economic equilibrium, Growth and Change Vol. 40 No. 1 (March 2009), pp. 169–196