Political commentators routinely treat rural America as an undifferentiated bastion of strength for Republicans. In fact, rural America is a deceptively simple term describing a remarkably diverse collection of places encompassing nearly 75 percent of the U.S. land area and 50 million people. Voting trends in this vast area are far from…

Educational achievement in rural America is one of the country's great overlooked challenges. Rural students achieve below the U.S. average on national tests, and high school dropout rates are higher and college attendance lower than they are in cities and suburbs. When the U.S. Department of Education asks low-achieving schools to be turned…

This report is based on data obtained from historical documents, quantitative analysis of state agricultural censuses for 1885, 1895, and 1905, and interviews with farm women of Volga and German heritages, aged 14 to 87. The participation of women in wheat-based farming systems in Ellis County, Kansas, is examined as related to the ethnic…

During the farm crisis of the 1980s, many midwestern farm families suffered financial distress, but by 1989 an uneven financial recovery was under way. This report summarizes data collected from 342 Kansas farm operators (a 34% response rate) and 313 spouses (a 31% response rate) as part of a large survey conducted in 12 North Central states. The…