Working from a knowledge gap hypothesis stating that as amounts of information in a community or society increase, segments of the population with more education and higher socioeconomic status acquire this information at a greater rate than do lower status groups, a study examined the contributions to neighborhood residents' knowledge of local…

Data from 92 towns in northern New York were used to examine the influence of community social-class composition on both de facto and de jure discrimination against such housing. The positive influence of population growth on mobile-home occurrence was found to be conditioned by intercommunity class composition. (JHZ)

Proposes social structural view of poverty rates as a function of local opportunity instead of individual-level focus on who is poor. Defines poverty rates as a function of industrial structure and relative power of labor in a locality. Confirms theoretical model with data from 46 South Carolina counties. (LFL)