Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'rural'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 42
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Working PaperThe Rural/Urban Volunteering Divide
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-42
Are rural residents more likely to volunteer than those living in urban places? Although early sociological theory posited that rural residents were more likely to experience social bonds connecting them to their community, increasing their odds of volunteer engagement, empirical support is limited. Drawing upon the full population of rural and urban respondents to the United States Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) Volunteering Supplement (2002-2015), we found that rural respondents are more likely to report volunteering compared to urban respondents, although these differences are decreasing over time. Moreover, we found that propensities for rural and urban volunteerism vary based on differences in both individual and place-based characteristics; further, the size of these effects differ across rural and urban places. These findings have important implications for theory and empirical analysis.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Decline of Volunteering in the United States: Is it the Economy?
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-41
This article investigates the complex interactions between local and national economic contexts and volunteering behavior. We examine three dimensions of local economic context'economic disadvantage (e.g., the percentage of families living in poverty), income inequality, and economic growth (e.g., the change in median household income) and the impact of a national/global economic jolt'the Great Recession. Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey's (CPS) Volunteering Supplement (2002-2015) reveals. Individuals who live in places characterized by economic disadvantage and economic inequality are less likely to volunteer than individuals in more advantaged, equitable communities. The recession had a dampening effect on volunteering overall, but it had the largest dampening effect on individual volunteering in communities with above average rates of income equality and higher rates of economic growth. While individuals living in rural communities were more likely to volunteer than their urban counterparts before the recession, rural/urban differences disappear after the recession.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperFinding Suburbia in the Census
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-40
This study introduces a methodology that goes beyond the urban/rural dichotomy to classify areas into detailed settlement types: urban cores, suburbs, exurbs, outlying towns, and rural areas. Utilizing a database that provides housing unit estimates for census tracts as defined in 2010 for all decennial census years from 1940 to 2020, this research enables a longitudinal analysis of urban spatial expansion. By maintaining consistent geography across time, the methodology described in this paper emphasizes the era of development, as well as proximity to large urban centers. This broadly applicable methodology provides a framework for comparing the evolution of urban landscapes over a significant historical period, revealing trends in the transformation of territory from rural to urban, as well as associated suburbanization and exurban growth.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperPlace Based Economic Development and Tribal Casinos
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-24
Tribal lands in the U.S. have historically experienced some of the worst economic conditions in the nation. We review some existing research on the effect of American Indian tribal casinos on various measures of local economic development. This is an industry that began in the early 1990s and currently generates more than $40 billion annually. We also review the state of the literature on the effects of casino operations on communities in or adjacent to tribal areas. Using a new dataset linking individual and enterprise-level data longitudinally, this study examines the industry- and location-specific impacts of tribal casino operations. We focus in particular on the employment of American Indians. We document positive flows from unemployment and non-casino geographies to work in sectors related to casino operations. Tribal casinos differ from other standard place-based economic development projects in that they are focused on a single industry; we discuss these differences and note that some of the positive spillover effects may be similar to other, more standard place-based policies. Finally, we discuss additional and open-ended questions for future research on this topic.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperFood Security Status Across the Rural-Urban Continuum Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-01
Background: Food security, defined as consistent access to sufficient food to support an active life, is a crucial social determinant of health. A key dimension affecting food security is position along the rural-urban continuum, as there are important socio-economic and environmental differences between communities related to urbanicity or rurality that impact food access. The COVID-19 pandemic created social and economic shocks that altered financial and food security, which may have had differential effects by rurality and urbanicity. However, there has been limited research on how food security differs across the shades of the rural-urban community spectrum, as most often researchers have characterized communities as either urban or rural. Methods: In this study, which linked restricted use Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement data to census-tract level United States Department of Agriculture Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes, we estimated the prevalence of household food security across temporal (2015-2019 versus 2020-2021) and socio-spatial (urban, large rural city/town, small rural town, or isolated rural town/area) dimensions in order to characterize variations before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by urbanicity/rurality. We report prevalences as point estimates with 95% confidence intervals. Results: The prevalence of food security was 87.7% (87.5-88.0%) in 2015-2019 and 88.8% (88.4-89.3%) in 2020-2021 for urban areas, 85.5% (84.7-86.2%) in 2015-2019 and 87.1% (85.7-88.3%) in 2020-2021 for large rural towns/cities, 82.8% (81.5-84.1%) in 2015-2019 and 87.3% (85.7-89.2%) in 2020-2021 for small rural towns, and 87.6% (86.3-88.8%) in 2015-2019 and 90.9% (88.7-92.7%) in 2020-2021 for isolated rural towns/areas. Conclusion: These findings show that rural communities experiences of food security vary and aggregating households in these environments may mask areas of concern and concentrated need.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperGrassroots Design Meets Grassroots Innovation: Rural Design Orientation and Firm Performance
March 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-17
The study of grassroots design'applying structured, creative processes to the usability or aesthetics of a product without input from professional design consultancies'remains under investigated. If design comprises a mediation between people and technology whereby technologies are made more accessible or more likely to delight, then the process by which new grassroots inventions are transformed into innovations valued in markets cannot be fully understood. This paper uses U.S. data on the design orientation of respondents in the 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey linked to longitudinal data on the same firms to examine the association between design, innovation, and employment and payroll growth. Findings from the research will inform questions to be investigated in the recently collected 2022 Annual Business Survey (ABS) that for the first time contains a Design module.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMore than Chance: The Local Labor Market Effects of Tribal Gaming
April 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-22
Casino-style gaming is an important economic development strategy for many American Indian tribes throughout the United States. Using confidential Census microdata and a database of tribal government-owned casinos, I examine the local labor market effects of tribal gaming on different markets, over different time horizons, and for different subgroups. I find that tribal gaming is responsible for sustained improvements in employment and wages on reservations and that American Indians benefit the most. I also find that tribal gaming increases the average rental price of housing but by an amount smaller than the average wage increase, suggesting net local benefits.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUsing Small-Area Estimation (SAE) to Estimate Prevalence of Child Health Outcomes at the Census Regional-, State-, and County-Levels
November 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-48
In this study, we implement small-area estimation to assess the prevalence of child health outcomes at the county, state, and regional levels, using national survey data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAn Examination of the Informational Value of Self-Reported Innovation Questions
October 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-46
Self-reported innovation measures provide an alternative means for examining the economic performance of firms or regions. While European researchers have been exploiting the data from the Community Innovation Survey for over two decades, uptake of US innovation data has been much slower. This paper uses a restricted innovation survey designed to differentiate incremental innovators from more far-ranging innovators and compares it to responses in the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE) and the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) to examine the informational value of these positive innovation measures. The analysis begins by examining the association between the incremental innovation measure in the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey (REIS) and a measure of the inter-industry buying and selling complexity. A parallel analysis using BRDIS and ASE reveals such an association may vary among surveys, providing additional insight on the informational value of various innovation profiles available in self-reported innovation surveys.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAgglomeration Spillovers and Persistence: New Evidence from Large Plant Openings
June 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-21
We use confidential Census microdata to compare outcomes for plants in counties that 'win' a new plant to plants in similar counties that did not to receive the new plant, providing empirical evidence on the economic theories used to justify local industrial policies. We find little evidence that the average highly incentivized large plant generates significant productivity spillovers. Our semiparametric estimates of the overall local agglomeration function indicate that residual TFP is linear for the range of 'agglomeration' densities most frequently observed, suggesting local economic shocks do not push local economies to a new higher equilibrium. Examining changes twenty years after the new plant entrant, we find some evidence of persistent, positive increases in winning county-manufacturing shares that are not driven by establishment births.View Full Paper PDF
