The effects of differing migration patterns of the poor and nonpoor on the distribution of poverty rates geographically and ecologically (i.e., across the rural-urban continuum and across counties with differing economic and social characteristics) are described. Migration rates of working-age and retirement-age poor and nonpoor from 1985-90 are analyzed in several geographical frameworks, and poverty rates from the last two decennial censuses are compared across the same categories. This provides a general picture of how the poor are distributed geographically and ecologically, how that distribution changed during the 1980s, and how migration of the poor and nonpoor functioned to reduce, maintain, or heighten spatial differentials in poverty rates. Attention is given primarily to nonmetropolitan areas and how the distribution of poverty there was affected by migration processes. Migration patterns were found consistently to maintain and reinforce the pre-existing disparities in the distribution of the poor and nonpoor.