 
The Appalachian region and eastern Kentucky, where STRANGER WITH A CAMERA is set, has shown marked progress in education, employment rates and living standards since the 1960s. It is no longer the land of severe poverty that it was three decades ago.
When President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty in 1964, one in three Appalachian people were considered impoverished. Now the poverty rate of one in 15 is close to the national average. The number of adults who have received a high school diploma has also jumped from one out of three to two out of three; and the infant death rate has been cut in half.
Furthermore, Appalachia grew faster than similar areas outside the region, according to a 1996 study conducted by Andy Isserman and Terance Rephann at West Virginia University on behalf of the National Science Foundation. "You just can't call it 'a region apart' anymore," says Isserman, director of the Regional Research Institute and a professor of economics and geography.
Since 1965, the 13-state area has received $6.5 billion in Federal funding. The money, distributed through The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), has been spent on infrastructure, including roads and schools. While the importance and validity of ARC has been debated since its inception in 1965, the study by Isserman and Rephann is the first to perform an empirical analysis of the commission's impact on the region.
The ARC was established by Congress in 1965 to support economic and social development in the multi-state region. A report commissioned by the ARC, "Appalachia Then and Now," also documents the economic progress of Appalachia from 1964 (when a presidential commission convened by John F. Kennedy studied the region) to 1996. It also found a dramatic increase in such positive indicators as the rate of high school graduation and the number of jobs available.
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