Poverty is higher in remote rural areas and in inner cities, but the rural elderly are much more likely to be poor than those living in urban areas. Thirteen percent of rural elders 60 years and older were poor in 2000, compared with nine percent of elders living in a metro area [20]. Thus we expect to find the most evidence of impeded access for the poor elderly who reside in rural areas. We interact the proportion of elderly in poverty with the proportion in rural areas to include in the model. We also expect that elderly living among elderly in rural areas may have greater access impedance than elderly.
