When a local business that served as a community hub closes, residents may need to create a new meeting space

Dairy Queens served as a gathering spot for many rural
Texas residents. (Photo by Jaime Adame, Daily Yonder)

 

As Dairy Queens shutter in rural communities across Texas, locals see their social spaces disappear. The ice cream franchise shops have long served as places of connection for small-town residents.

"In rural areas, sites where people choose to gather are 'neither work nor home, but they anchor everything in between,' as a former rural school superintendent, Melissa Sadorf put it in a recent essay on the importance of what are sometimes called 'third places,'" reports Jaime Adame of The Daily Yonder.

Dairy Queen closures in Texas surged this year over legal disputes within the company, and smaller communities felt the loss. "Out of some 30 locations to shut down statewide, twelve were in towns with fewer than 3,000 people," Adame writes. "Civic leaders and townspeople must now grapple with literal empty spaces and rips in the fabric of community life."

When the Dairy Queen in Canadian, Texas, closed, the small town of roughly 2,300 people in northern Texas dearly missed the connection spot the restaurant once provided. The community is still working to recover from fierce wildfires that burned down parts of the town last year.

Remelle Farrar, interim director for the local economic development corporation in Canadian, told Adame, "It’s an impact to our culture, absolutely. . . . [It was] a place to go for many members of our population after the event of the day, to go sit and talk… and relax."

While Dairy Queen is still considered a "Texas icon. . . . The view of Dairy Queen as a community’s social hub doesn’t ring true as much as it did decades ago, even in rural Texas," Adame reports. "Rural areas are more likely to struggle at providing such third places, according to Danielle Rhubart, a researcher at Penn State University who studies rural health and well-being."

To fill holes the closure of a Dairy Queen or similar spot can leave behind, residents of smaller communities need to look around their town and see what alternatives are available. Adame explains, "Creating a third place can involve adapting unused buildings, even a former church. Rhubart said it’s important for small communities to support local businesses and make use of what’s already in place, such as libraries or outdoor spaces like parks, to ensure that welcoming places exist for people to gather."

Opinion: Addressing white rural rage may mean using a broader scope of understanding and asking better questions

The book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman has continued to stir debate. The Rev. Daniel Schultz shares his insights on the book's controversial themes in his opinion for Raw Story. An excerpt of his opinion is shared below. To read his entire opinion, click here.

To begin with, the book faces two primary objections. "First, Schaller and Waldman may have misrepresented or misunderstood scholarship on the rural context. Second, their thesis — that white rural voters pose a unique threat to American democracy — may be overstated and undersupported.

"I've known of Schaller and Waldman's work for a long time and know Tom himself at least a little. So, I was surprised to see the vehemence and breadth of the pushback on the new book. I was equally surprised to see other folks I know strongly defend their thesis. The authors got their own word in at The New Republic."

Natilyn Photography image, Unsplash

It's time to consider that rural voters may be voting for race. "While I was groping around for what I did want to say, Noah Berlatsky ... just went ahead and nailed it: 'Democrats struggle not with rural voters in general, but with white rural voters in particular. And white rural voters do not vote for the GOP because they are rural. They vote for the GOP because they are white.'

"That's pretty much it. As one scholar argues, if you control for other factors, the difference between rural and urban voting patterns essentially disappears. Race is a much stronger predictor than things like income, religion or place of residence."

Social life and an unwillingness to 'rock the boat' motivate rural voters. "There is one factor particular to rural areas that deserves consideration before we look at potential answers to the 'rural problem.' Rural folks traditionally don't move around as much as city folks. Deep roots feed social capital through rich networks of relations, neighbors and friends. . . . But those same roots provide lots of incentives not to rock the social boat."

"There's a need to start asking better questions. "I don't say these things to valorize or demonize rural areas. It's just that knowing them helps us to ask the right questions. . . . The usual hot take is that they've been hoodwinked by Republicans into voting on culture rather than cold hard cash. But that doesn't give them much credit. They're not fools." 

"Democrats and progressives will need to do a lot less writing off rural districts as hopeless and a lot more intentional work on developing solidarity with them. . . . It would help if there were a leftwing media ecosystem to push the good news coming out of those developments."

New study shows what news Oklahoma residents trust and where they want to read it

Local news sources by type (OMC chart)

An academic study analyzing Oklahomans' media habits reveals that readers rely on social media for much of their news and information, and that they trust local news stories more when local residents are in charge of the news reporting.  

The study was recently released by the Oklahoma Media Center. It was "designed to fuel data-driven training from the nationally known Trusting News nonprofit to help collaborating newsrooms execute experiments aimed to increase trust and support of local news," reports OMC. 

"It's the first qualitative observational study of both news deserts and underserved metro communities statewide in Oklahoma," reports OMC. The  study was completed by Rosemary Avance, assistant professor at the School of Media and Strategic Communications at Oklahoma State University, and Allyson Shortle, associate professor of political science and co-founder of the University of Oklahoma's Community Engagement and Experiments Lab.

Some condensed study highlights:
State residents mainly rely on social media and community word of mouth for local news. "Most participants also use word of mouth to find out about local events, stay involved in community happenings, and engage with community processes," Avance and Shortle wrote. "This includes information exchanged through social media, text message, email, telephone, and in-person, face-to-face communication with people the participant actually knows."

According to the study, small-town residents express more trust in local news when a local person is in charge of it. "Respondents value free, accessible news and want to access it via social media," Avance and Shortle wrote. "For the most part, they will not pay for access, especially in the form of a subscription. As one participant explained, 'I don't want to pay for something I can get for free from the internet.'"

Based on study analysis, Avance and Shortle made five preliminary recommendations for news organizations to increase engagement with local news.

Commit to ongoing investments in local communities: Distrust of outsiders and news organizations' failure to understand a community's priorities and contextual dynamics can cause even well-funded news media ventures to fail, especially in tight-knit rural communities. News media organizations cannot simply report on a community from afar, nor can they rely on past knowledge of community dynamics.

Identify ways to continually communicate the importance of civic engagement, local politics and journalistic reporting to populations at risk of disengagement from local news: In many areas with low access to reliable news, participants reported that they did not need or want it. However, after conversing about the types of news and information that the community may be unable to access, most ultimately came to the idea that more news would benefit their communities.

Shift news communication models to prioritize social media: While it is apparent that general interest in print publications has declined, we also found that people are less enthusiastic about visiting websites to access information. Instead of clicking through a post on social media, they prefer to gather information from their social media feed itself.

Partner with area individuals and organizations: Each area we visited had one or more individuals or organizations who were considered reliable sources of information. These influencers already have social capital and can serve as vital entry points for community engagement.

Experiment with community-engaged journalism solutions: Many respondents talked about former town newspapers run by a trusted local citizen who cared enough and was embedded enough in the community to offer a reliable source of information. . . .The concept of a community paper is still relevant. Partner with local high schools, colleges, and universities to develop and deploy customized community journalism models.

Delving into rural homelessness, an anthropologist's new book takes an in-depth look at this often-hidden issue

Families on the Edge was published August 15.
(Photo from MIT Press via The Daily Yonder)

Homelessness looks different depending on where you live. In the case of rural homelessness, it's often hidden, complex and surprisingly prevalent. Author and researcher Elizabeth Carpenter-Song is a medical and psychological anthropologist who has studied homelessness for more than a decade. Her new book Families on the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England is an "ethnographic study of housing insecurity in an under-studied region," reports Olivia Weeks of The Daily Yonder. A condensed version of Weeks' question-and-answer interview with Carpenter-Song is shared below.

What are the most important differences in experiences of rural and urban homelessness?
Homelessness in urban areas of the U.S. is much more visible. In many American cities, it is common to see and interact with people who may be unhoused. . . . In our rural towns and villages in New England, there are encampments of unhoused people, but these tend to be out of sight. People experiencing homelessness in rural areas . . . may camp in the woods, sleep in cars, or double-up with friends or family for periods of time.

In the context of families, which was the focus of my research, parents go to great lengths to avoid literal homelessness with their kids and, as a result, move frequently between different settings to access shelter. In rural areas, challenges related to housing are compounded by transportation challenges when people move to more remote towns to gain access to more affordable housing. But, this places people at risk of being isolated from support networks and creates challenges for finding employment and meeting basic needs within small rural towns.

Are there any commonalities that might seem surprising to an outsider?
The main commonality between experiences of homelessness in rural and urban areas is that homelessness is a housing problem. As a society, we are now experiencing the consequences of decades of underinvestment in affordable housing. Runaway real estate valuations and high costs of living, coupled with a lack of adequate housing stock, have created a common scenario across the U.S. in which safe and affordable housing is out of reach for more and more people.

You outline this problem in the book in which, as housing gets cheaper in your subject area, it inevitably gets further from crucial services and opportunities. Are there any good models for reversing that trend? Do you know of any small towns that have become more walkable or developed more reliable public transportation networks?
This is one of the big challenges we face in rural areas. In the book, I advocate for increasing housing density closer to town centers to mitigate transportation challenges and create more opportunities for accessing services and being integrated in the community. In the region I write about, the towns of Lebanon, New Hampshire and White River Junction, Vermont, are good examples of efforts to have mixed-use residential and commercial space, greater housing density, walkable downtown areas, and access to the local free bus service.

It is important to note that these two towns are relatively larger than many of the small villages in rural New England and are proximate to the major centers of employment in the region. Yet, I think these two settings can still serve as useful examples of how to create vibrant and accessible town centers in a rural region.

Higher religious participation linked to fewer deaths of despair; research suggests it's the social ties that matter

National Bureau of Economic Research working-paper graph
shows underlying cultural trends that preceded the opioid edpidemic

In 2000, the label "death of despair" did not exist. The phrase is now common and often attached to the opioid epidemic, but a deeper understanding of its root causes is still being explored. "A new paper by Tyler Giles of Wellesley, Daniel Hungerman of Notre Dame and Tamar Oostrom of Ohio State bolsters the case that deaths of despair stem in part from weakening social ties. It shows that mortality from these causes among middle-aged whites stopped falling around 1990—well before the rise in opioid use," The Economist reports. "What changed at that time? The authors studied attendance at religious services. They found that states with more participation had fewer deaths of despair and that the faster religious attendance fell in a state, the more such deaths rose. A paper in the Journal of American Medical Association in 2020 also showed that of 110,000 health workers, those who went to services were less likely to die from these causes."

To study the relationship between deaths of despair and religious participation, "The authors tried to isolate the impact of religion by studying blue laws, which banned commerce on Sundays to encourage churchgoing," The Economist reports. "Whenever a state repealed a blue law, religious attendance tended to plummet, creating a natural experiment. And sure enough, deaths of despair rose unusually quickly in the few years following these repeals. Although legalizing alcohol sales on Sundays may account for some of this trend, the biggest increase in mortality came from suicides."

A Google search of "Why go to church if I can pray at home?" yields pages of responses. And yet, this study "strikingly found that private prayer was not linked to lower deaths of despair," The Economist notes. "This suggests that the risk reduction stems not from belief, but rather from the interpersonal connections that organized religion provides. Although secular groups like charities or labor unions also produce such 'social capital,' the JAMA authors say that faith-based networks provide unusually potent protection."

The phrase "death of despair" comes from a 2015 milestone paper published by Anne Case and Angus Deaton that analyzed death rates in America and found deaths of despair to be disproportionately rural. "The economists found that mortality had been rising among middle-aged whites, thanks to a surge in drug overdoses, alcohol-related illness, and suicides—causes they deemed 'deaths of despair,'" reports The Economist. Since 2015, academics have sought tease out the root cause of these deaths -- are they caused by mental anguish or opioid abuse -- the answer is yet to come.

David Sawyer remembered as a changer of lives through challenges to build confidence; helped start AmeriCorps

By Al Cross

Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky 

David Sawyer, a Kentucky-grown back-to-the-lander who ran a student-service program at Berea College, helped start AmeriCorps and became an international consultant on the environment, civic engagement and a wide range of other topics, was remembered fondly Saturday as someone who changed people’s lives.

“He centered his life’s work on service, right livelihood,” longtime friend Peter Hille, president of the Mountain Association, said at a memorial service in Berea’s Union Church for Sawyer, who died Nov. 25 at his home in Portland, Oregon, at 71.

Hille said Sawyer took the beauty and suffering of life and “held them as if they were high-voltage cables, and with that current thrumming through him, he just glowed, didn’t he? David was incandescent, and he burned with the intensity of that truth.”

Hille and Sawyer, a Lexington native, met in the 1970s as neighbors, two of many who had moved to rural Kentucky to follow alternative lifestyles and try to live off the land.

David Hartwell Sawyer III

Sawyer became director of the Students for Appalachia service program at Berea, and when Bill Clinton became president and wanted to start a national service program for young people, the White House asked him to help start the pilot project started before Congress actually created AmeriCorps.

“We were chosen to train 50 people to train the first participants of the AmeriCorps program,” his widow, Jennifer Sawyer, said at the service. “That to me is the thing that will live on about David the most. He changed people’s lives.”

And not just with AmeriCorps. Most of the 15 speakers at the service recalled times when Sawyer turned their lives around.

Professor and therapist Blake Jones of Midway, Ky., said Sawyer “believed in us when we couldn’t believe in ourselves,” always using their last names when he got serious about something they should do. Jones recalled this exchange:
“Jones, I want you to be the student director at SFA.”
“I’m sorry, David, I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, and you will.”

“David called himself a Buddhist Christian and I just assumed that’s just what they did; they just said stuff and just walked away. . . . So I became the student director," Jones told the crowd. “I needed unconditional love and I needed accountability, and he gave both those things to me.”

Lisa Perkins-Orta spoke at the service. (Photo from Zoom)

Lisa Perkins-Orta, an art therapist in Huntington, W. Va., told a similar story.

“He saw in me something I never knew existed,” she said, recalling how she came to his home for an SFA staff retreat and “I started crying because of how it smelled. It smelled like my Mamaw’s house and I hadn’t been home for a long time.” Without asking her permission, Sawyer told the group the story: “Perkins came in here and just wept.”

“He just bared me in front of God and everybody,” Perkins said. “That moment gave me the life lesson that who I am and what I am experiencing is worth something. . . . That was the first time that I ever saw my tears as something strong. . . . I was a little girl from Webbville, Kentucky, who didn’t want to keep on being in Webbville, Kentucky. Because of his belief, I became who I am.”

After a decade at Berea, Sawyer facilitated other national leadership programs, a global conference on climate change, and spent four years working with the BP energy company, coaching senior leaders, designing the cultural dimension of its merger with Arco. He was executive-in-residence for Kansas City’s Kauffman Foundation, promoting citizen engagement and civic innovation; the first executive director of Social Venture Partners Portland, and chief culture officer for gDiapers, maker of the world's first flushable and compostable diaper. He co-founded Converge, a network of consultants who help form social-impact networks, and at his death was president of Context, a consultancy on strategy, leadership and culture. He worked in many fields, including sustainable agriculture, education reform, national service, social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, the emerging green economy, and multisector collaboration.

Some of this material appeared in the obituary published on The Rural Blog Nov. 30.

Dispatch from Iowa: What happens when a newspaper chain lets a community's small daily newspaper deteriorate

The building is for sale. (Photo by KC McGinnis for The Atlantic)

All across America, small newspapers are shriveling, mainly because digital media have taken much of their advertising base. Quantifying that on a national scale would be very difficult; the U.S. has more than 6,000 newspapers, most of them small. But a story about one, The Hawk Eye of Burlington, Iowa, is emblematic of the problem, which is worst for small daily papers bearing a burden of debt incurred by hedge-fund buyers like GateHouse Media, which took over Gannett Co. and its name.

Elaine Godfrey, who grew up near the Mississippi River town of 24,000, writes for The Atlantic about The Hawk Eye under the new Gannett: "Its staff, now down to three overstretched news reporters, still produces a print edition six days a week. But the paper is dying. Its pages are smaller than they used to be, and there are fewer of them. Even so, wide margins and large fonts are used to fill space. The paper is laid out by a remote design team and printed 100 miles away in Peoria, Illinois; if a reader doesn’t get her paper in the morning, she is instructed to dial a number that will connect her to a call center in the Philippines. Obituaries used to be free; now, when your uncle dies, you have to pay to publish a write-up. These days, most of The Hawk Eye’s articles are ripped from other Gannett-owned Iowa publications, such as The Des Moines Register and the Ames Tribune, written for a readership three hours away. The opinion section, once an arena for local columnists and letter writers to spar over the merits and morals of riverboat gambling and railroad jobs moving to Topeka, is dominated by syndicated national columnists."

Using the recently created Burlington Breaking News Facebook page to solicit comments, Godfrey got dozens: "Readers noticed the paper’s sloppiness first—how there seemed to be twice as many typos as before, and how sometimes the articles would end mid-sentence instead of continuing after the jump. The newspaper’s remaining reporters are overworked; there are local stories they’d like to tell but don’t have the bandwidth to cover. The Hawk Eye’s current staff is facing the impossible task of keeping a historic newspaper alive while its owner is attempting to squeeze it dry."

Social-media sites that pop up when a newspaper withers "can be a useful resource, and a good source of community jokes and gossip. But speculation and rumor run rampant" on the Facebook page, Godfrey writes. "When a member hears something that sounds like gunshots nearby, she’ll post about it, and others will offer theories about the source. Once, I read a thread about an elementary-school principal suddenly skipping town. Some thought he might have behaved inappropriately with a student; one person said he’d been involved with a student’s mother; another swore they’d seen security-camera footage of the principal slashing tires in a parking lot at night. I checked The Hawk Eye and other outlets, but I couldn’t find verification of any of those stories."

The guessing is hard for Dale Alison, former Hawk Eye editor, to watch. "He often interjects in the comments to correct false information. Sometimes he posts news himself. . . .  People want to know what’s going on, Alison told me; they just don’t know how to find the answer, whom to call, where to look. That’s what reporters are for."

Godfrey touches on another national trend seen all over the country: "In the absence of local coverage, all news becomes national news: Instead of reading about local policy decisions, people read about the blacklisting of Dr. Seuss books. Instead of learning about their own local candidates, they consume angry takes about Marjorie Taylor Greene," the radical Republican congresswoman from Georgia.

And she senses an even more disturbing trend, relayed by Mayor Jon Billups, who was fired as The Hawk Eye's circulation director in 2017: "Since the purchase of the paper, he’s noticed a growing negative self-image among residents, he told me. Fewer people see Burlington as a nice place to live; they seem to like their neighbors less. 'We’re struggling with not having [this] iconic thing.' As mayor, he helped start a newsletter to keep residents updated on city projects. 'It’s a matter of time before our local paper does not exist.'"

Like many towns with shriveled papers, Burlington has an online news site, the Burlington Beacon, founded by Jeff Abell, soon joined by William Smith, both former Hawk Eye reporters. "The Beacon is far from profitable. Until recently, Abell paid Smith from his own pocket. The two work out of Abell’s comic-book store in downtown Burlington," Godfrey reports. “Jeff and Will are doing their best,” Alison told her in an interview at the newspaper's building, now for sale. “But doggone it, it would take 150 years to build up what they had here.”

Godfrey reflects, "When people lament the decline of small newspapers, they tend to emphasize the most important stories that will go uncovered: political corruption, school-board scandals, zoning-board hearings, police misconduct. They are right to worry about that. But often overlooked are the more quotidian stories, the ones that disappear first when a paper loses resources: stories about the annual Teddy Bear Picnic at Crapo Park, the town-hall meeting about the new swimming-pool design, and the tractor games during the Denmark Heritage Days. These stories are the connective tissue of a community; they introduce people to their neighbors, and they encourage readers to listen to and empathize with one another. When that tissue disintegrates, something vital rots away. We don’t often stop to ponder the way that a newspaper’s collapse makes people feel: less connected, more alone. As local news crumbles, so does our tether to one another."

Livability ranks its Top 100 Best Small Towns in America; Lebanon, N.H., is at the top of the list

Lebanon, N.H., (right) is the best small town in America, according to Livability's inaugural list of the Top 100 Best Small Towns for towns with populations between 1,000 to 20,000. Towns were ranked based on eight categories: economy; health care; housing; social and civic capital; education; amenities; demographics and infrastructure.

Towns were judged by access to schools, hospitals, culture, recreation, transportation, arts, overall crime rate, climate and environment. Also considered were affordability, choices that make the town liveable for people of all ages and interests and whether or not residents utilized all the opportunities available.

Rounding out the top 10 are: Los Alamos, N.M.; Durango, Colo.; St. Augustine, Fla.; Bar Harbor, Maine; Louisville, Colo.; Hood River, Ore.; Spearfish, S.D.; Sebastopol, Calif.; and Port Angeles, Wash. To see the entire list, click here.

Livability ranks 100 best small to mid-sized cities to live in the U.S.

Is your town one of the best places to live in the U.S.? Livability has announced its second-annual ranking of the best small to mid-sized cities in the U.S. "As Livability’s editors and writers crisscross the U.S in search of great stories, we find that time and again, the best tales are told in the Main Street diners, corner churches, park benches and even the mayor’s offices of small to mid-sized cites and towns," says Livability. "Far from letting time pass them by, these communities are doubling down on livability for their residents." 

Missoula, Mont.

Towns were judged based on amenities, demographics, economy, education, health care, housing, social and civic capital and transportation and ranked based on the total score of the eight categories. Madison, Wisc. was ranked No. 1, followed by Rochester, Minn.; Arlington, Va.; Boulder, Colo.; Palo Alto, Calif.; Berkley, Calif.; Santa Clara, Calif.; Missoula, Mont.; Boise, Idaho; and Iowa City, Iowa. (Read more) 

Iowa study suggests big farms good for small towns

The Obama administration's focus on small farms and rural development has been questioned by some Republicans and agribusiness interests. A new study from Iowa State University, which suggests that large farms are a net benefit to small towns, may increase those criticisms. The study, conducted by ISU sociologists, looked at the effect of large farms on the social fabric of small towns, Ken Anderson of Brownfield reports. "We wanted to know, is large-scale agriculture—are large-scale hog confinement operations—a negative influence on the quality of life in these communities?" said Steve Sapp, ISU professor of sociology and coordinator of the study. "We found that there are small favorable effects—not a boom—but at least not negative, so far."

The ISU study, which looked at income growth, unemployment rates, crime and several other factors that help define the quality of life in a community, was conducted in small towns in all of Iowa’s 99 counties during the decade from 1994 to 2004. Sapp said while the positive effects found were modest, they were not the negative effect some may have expected. "This is not talking about the immediate neighbors that have to suffer the consequences of living near large hog confinement operations," Sapp told Anderson. "This is looking at the community and the overall quality of life in the community—and the census figures, as well as survey data from the residents shows—at least it’s not a strong negative." (Read more)

Rural social club evolves into civic organization that helps the community address major issues

What began as a town social club in rural Tennessee is taking larger civic matters into its own hands: preservation, publicity and community outreach. Suzanne Normand Blackwood reports for The Tennessean that the Triune Community Club in Williamson County, just south of Nashville, has been busy organizing panel discussions, running a rural-themed book club and reinventing how a community can affect the life of a small town in a rapidly subrbanizing area.

As agriculture changes and declines, and land-use planning becomes a key topic, the community club is a vehicle for expression and debate about change. The club embraced such issues two years ago to "allow the citizens to have a voice so they can discuss issues that concern them with appropriate agencies and officials," Ginger Shirling, a lifetime member, told Blackwood.

Key to the club’s mission is activism in the face of change. Members of the local book club have been reading Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character by Randall Arendt to gain a better understanding of land-use planning, and several people in the 60-member group are holding educational debates about the importance of historic preservation and decisions about commercialism in the area. History "gives me a foundation so that I can be better prepared to go forward," Karen Emerson-McPeak, a member of the club's historical preservation committee, told Blackwood. "I feel like we should embrace the past and combine with the future, creating a better Triune." (Read more)

Curing persistent poverty requires more social capital, not more federal grants, study suggests

"What does it take for a rural place to be economically vibrant?" the Daily Yonder asks, and answers: "Bowling centers help. Federal grants don't." Well, at least not the grants issued in 1990 to counties that were persistently poor in 1999. Those are among the mountain of data that two researchers used to find the causes of persistent poverty in the United States.

"Contrary to expectation, higher federal grant funding per capita tends to exacerbate rather than ameliorate poverty rates in a locality," the researchers write in the Journal of Socio-Economics. In a footnote, they say, "This suggests the possibility of reverse causality – that federal grants are directed more to poorer places." But statistical regression analysis, using the change in poverty rates between 1989 and 1999, "yields the same result, even when we control for initial poverty rates." Very intriguing and, as researchers often say, worth studying more.

The researchers are Stephan Goetz of Penn State and its Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development and Anil Rupasingha of the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. They developed an index of social capital based on a county's number of bowling centers, public golf courses, membership clubs for sports and recreation, fitness centers, civic, business and social associations, religious, labor, professional and political organizations and tax-exempt, non-profit groups, as well as the percentage of eligible voters who voted in presidential elections and the county's response rate to the census.

"They found that rural places with more of these meeting places and organizations had lower levels of family poverty. Social capital seemed to reduce poverty in rural America. This wasn't true in the cities, where social capital had little effect on family poverty rates," Bishop writes. We still conder about cause and effect; the authors don't say whether they did a regression analysis to see if being poor discourages the development of social capital. But we do think persistently poor places need to think more about developing their social capital.

The study has many other facets; one is the effect of big-box stores. "The more big box retailers like Wal-Mart there are in a community, the higher the family poverty rate. Many rural communities try to attract big-box retailers. The two researchers conclude this strategy may be self-defeating," Bishop writes. The researchers note, "Jobs created by big box retailers are mostly low-paying jobs that may not help families escape from poverty, and these establishments tend also not to reinvest locally their profits earned."

The study report, titled "Social and political forces as determinants of poverty," was published last year in the Journal of Socio-Economics (Number 36, 2007, pages 650-671). For access, click here.