In every state in the South, the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher who were born outside the state exceed the percentage born in-state, reflecting their dependence on imported talent over building their own talent-development systems. In Virginia, the Southern state with the highest percentage of residents with a B.A. or…

This executive summary highlights research findings on outcomes in education, employment, and income in the southern United States region. Findings include: (1) As a whole, Southern schools, colleges, and universities perform better than ever, though they are in constant need of improvement to meet the demands of both democracy and a changing…

Rural depopulation is a concern in many countries, and various policy initiatives have been taken to combat such trends. This article examines whether hidden potential for rural population growth can be found in Sweden. If such potential exists, it implies that the development prospects for many rural areas are not as unpromising as they may seem…

This article seeks to identify factors associated with the formation and development of nonmetropolitan destinations for older in-migration, thereby explaining why some U.S. counties are more likely than others to be nonmetro retirement destinations. We contend that most nonmetro retirement destinations are established and developed over time…

Rapid Hispanic population growth represents a pronounced demographic transformation in many nonmetropolitan counties, particularly since 1990. Its considerable public policy implications stem largely from high proportions of new foreign-born residents. Despite the pressing need for information on new immigrants in nonmetro counties and a…

This article uses unique community-level data aggregated from censuses of associations to analyze growth and volatility in rural populations of grassroots associations. A qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) shows that the two main paths to growth were (1) centralization in polycephalous (multicentered) municipalities and (2) population growth…

We analyze the relationship between Hispanic population growth and changes in U.S. rural income inequality from 1990 through 2000. Applying comparative approaches used for urban areas we disentangle Hispanic population growth's contribution to inequality by comparing and statistically modeling changes in the family income Gini coefficient across…

In rural China today, only 0.2% have a college education. Since 1980, China has sustained the highest rate of growth in per-capita income in the world. From 1981 to 2001, the number of poor people living on less than $1 per day was reduced from 634 million to 211 million. The poverty problem, however, has not been solved. In 2005, a delegation of…

For more than a century, communities across the United States legally employed strategies to create and maintain racial divides. One particularly widespread and effective practice was that of "sundown towns," which signaled to African Americans and others that they were not welcome within the city limits after dark. Though nearly 1,000…

In the 1990s, studies have documented widespread growth of immigrants in U.S. communities not known as common destinations in the past. This trend has fueled population growth in some nonmetropolitan areas and offset population decline in other areas. In this paper, we examine the implications of recent foreign born in-migration for rural America.…

Establishes that considerable variation exists among rural local government leaders in their propensity to innovate; that innovation within rural communities is affected by socioeconomic development; and that population growth affects the innovation decision-making process. (JOW)

Examines interdecade growth of United States nonmetropolitan incorporated places for each decade since 1900. Shows four periods of growth and decline patterns: 1900-1930, continuous rural settlement and overall concentration; 1930-1940, depressed urban growth; 1940-1950, suburbanization and rural decline; and 1960-1980, deconcentration and village…

A survey of 441 adults from four small rural Utah and Wyoming communities exhibiting highly divergent population growth patterns indicates residents of energy "boom" towns do not report criminal victimization experiences that differ from those in "nonboom" communities, but they do exhibit significantly higher fear of crime.…