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This paper documents patterns of racial change in the non- metropolitan South during 1950-1980. Based on population counts from the 1950-1980 decennial censuses, our results reveal considerable racial change in southern nonmetropolitan counties, although the magnitude of change pales in comparison to recent shifts in racial composition in northern central cities and suburbs. Moreover, there is little evidence of widely fluctuating differences between nonmetropolitan counties in changes in racial composition. Finally, racial change in the nonmetropolitan South, unlike that in northern cities, has occurred largely in the context of overall growth rather than population decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of poverty generally fall into either "individualist" or "structuralist" camps. Often these are seen as irreconcilable and incompatible competing perspectives. This paper integrates individualist and structuralist accounts of poverty by examining the relationship between "person poverty" and "place poverty" in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan labor markets, using a multilevel framework. I fashion a general model of poverty production and allocation, drawing on the labor market ecology perspective. After a discussion of this perspective, I develop a multilevel framework for analyzing data from the 1990 Census PUMS-L sample, STF-3c, and other sources to show how compositional and contextual factors affect households' likelihoods of being in poverty. These multilevel models also allow us to estimate the degree to which labor market conditions influence the magnitude of household labor supply characteristics. Results suggest that both compositional and contextual factors contribute to the metro-nonmetro difference in poverty rates, and that the effects of employment vary in accordance with labor market characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to gain a fuller understanding of factors that foster community cohesion and contribute to the residents' social and economic well-being; and, second, to move beyond previous research that used larger spatial units such as states, counties, or aggregates of counties and to focus instead on American small towns (population 2,500–20,000). The data on small towns are drawn from public-use files and from confidential microdata from various economic censuses. From these sources we construct measures of locally oriented firms, self-employment, business establishments that serve as gathering places, and associations. The local capitalism and civic engagement variables generally perform as hypothesized; in some cases they are related quite strongly to civic welfare outcomes such as income levels, poverty rates, and nonmigration rates. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working with place-level data and suggest some strategies for subsequent work on small towns and other incorporated places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a national survey in Bolivia and from a regional sample of poor communities in two regions of Bolivia, we model the effects of community conditions, household characteristics, and social relations on child health as measured by child mortality and stunted growth. based on national data, children in rural areas are twice as likely to die before the age of two than are children in large cities, and about one-third of the children in rural areas are stunted. Including measures of community, household and maternal characteristics accounts for at least two-thirds of the urban/rural difference in child health. We conclude that expansion of health services, improvements in household and community sanitation, and socioeconomic development are all need to overcome the rural disadvantage in child health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically reviews theoretical concepts and measurements of social capital and tests hypotheses that elaborate how four dimensions of social capital (informal social ties, formal social ties, trust, and norms of collective action) and sense of community are related to participation in community improvement activities for elderly residents in small towns and rural communities. Mail surveys of 2,802 elders in 99 small towns and rural communities in Iowa reveal that many elders are actively involved in their community. Social capital and sense of community are very important in predicting elderly participation in community improvement activities, but they relate differently to elderly community involvement. Formal ties and sense of community have much stronger relationships with community involvement than informal ties and norms of collective action. Generalized trust is not significantly related to elderly community involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on rural sociology. Professor H.C. Taylor, University of Wisconsin, referred to the fact that little was known in a systematic way about the play of social forces in farm life, and virtually nothing as to the metes and bounds of rural communities. Dr. Taylor's conversations about agriculture and country life brought into author's thinking an organic set of problems, quite new to him, which lighted up and set in order the prevailing manifoldness of farm life which he knew, a routine of tasks which, while it had brought to him much delight, had always been saturated with mysterious troubles. Thereupon all his previous experience with farm life, with farm people, with villages, towns and cities was repolarized. Meaning and value came into my rather motley impressions and ideas of farming. The U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's Country Life Commission had for several months been stirring the press with its hearings in state after state, giving rise to a spontaneous movement for a new type of civilization among farm and village people.

Previous research has found no evidence that local mobilization to promote growth has any effect on small town population growth. Building from the premise that effective promotion depends on experience and contacts with the larger society, this study investigates relationships among the extralocal participation of influentials, state and federal program participation, and growth in manufacturing and population during the 1970's in 88 small northwestern Wisconsin towns. The results are consistent with the model, although manufacturing and population growth did not occur in the same places in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a stratified sample of Pennsylvania small urban places, this study examines the relationship between organized local efforts to promote growth and changes in residential population size. 1973-78. A measure local growth mobilization based upon key informant responses to a mail questionnaire is examined statistically with other community attributes known to influence local growth. While most localities prove to have an interest in growth, inaccessible communities with low socioeconomic status, especially places with the human capital necessary for mobilization, are substantially more likely to exhibit local mobilization for growth. The absence of a statistically significant positive relationship between these mobilization activities and subsequent population growth, however, raises questions about the commonly assumed positive correspondence between local growth mobilization and subsequently population change. This important finding is discussed in the context of the "mass society" model of local growth and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]