Source: KANSAS STATE UNIV submitted to
THE GREAT RECESSION, ITS AFTERMATH, AND PATTERNS OF RURAL AND SMALL TOWN DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
TERMINATED
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
0229869
Grant No.
(N/A)
Project No.
KS3001
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
W-3001
Program Code
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Oct 1, 2012
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2017
Grant Year
(N/A)
Project Director
Kulcsar, L.
Recipient Organization
KANSAS STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MANHATTAN,KS 66506
Performing Department
Sociology, Soc Work & Anthrop
Non Technical Summary
This committee is dedicated to addressing rural population issues that matter to policy makers, communities, and local residents. The objectives identified for this proposal come, in part, from information gathered from stakeholders during meetings, workshops, briefings, and field studies held during the past five years. Given the dramatic shifts in rural population patterns and trends associated with the Great Recession, such as the unexpected downturns in migration and fertility rates, we anticipate the emergence of new concerns on the part of stakeholders throughout the country. For this reason, we propose to take a community-engaged approach to finalizing our specific research questions and to integrate extension educators, policy makers, and community groups into our broader research team. Our research will document the realignment of population growth and decline during the periods before, during, and after the Great Recession in the vast expanse of rural America that includes 75 percent of the nation's land area and 51 million of its residents. In so doing, we will contribute to the developments of more informed policy to address the needs of the people, places and institutions of nonmetropolitan America. Rural residents populate every region of the country, from counties bordering suburbs to remote and isolated areas. Rural areas encompass agricultural regions as well as areas where workers depend mostly on manufacturing or tourism. They include prosperous areas with rapidly growing populations as well as chronically depressed locales experiencing population decline. Accordingly, our research plan is national in scope but employs a comparative perspective, and relies on a multidisciplinary research team located throughout the U.S. to ensure familiarity with diverse rural demographic, social, and economic settings. The project's primary goal continues to be the production of this type of policy-relevant research that informs users about current demographic trends and their implications for rural policy. We aim for broad readership among policy makers and plan to continue our strong record of outreach. Our work does not evaluate the operation of particular public policies or practices, but it does provide essential contextual information that helps policymakers decide where public intervention is most needed, and the alternative forms such actions might take.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
80360993080100%
Goals / Objectives
The outputs from the project will reflect the various audiences we are intended to reach. The members of this committee have strong records of scholarly publication, and we anticipate producing a large number of articles in refereed journals and book chapters covering specific substantive issues related to the three objectives. We will produce policy-related issue briefs disseminated through a variety of outlets to make research results quickly and easily accessible to policy makers and stakeholders. In addition, we plan to use the Web to improve access to publications, issue briefs, and rural datasets. We expect to organize one or more policy-oriented conferences, most likely based in Washington, DC. Our successful experience shows that such conferences can be readily organized and effectively publicized. A national conference on rural housing issues is currently being explored. Summary materials and workshop procedures will be produced to share with a wider audience. Demographic analysis is essential for effective public policies and development practices in rural communities. As stated above, the research proposed here does not evaluate specific policies or practices, but it does provide information that is crucial to good decision-making. The demographic analyses provided by such research provides contextual information that will help public policy makers and local residents design or modify programs to address important social issues and problems and decide where public intervention is most needed. Moreover the national and regional level studies produced by this committee enable state and local decision makers to consider their respective situations in comparative context. (2013): We will spend the first year of this project working with Regional Rural Development Centers and policy groups to finalize a specific set of research questions within the broader scope of our objectives. A policy-relevant research agenda on population and housing markets will be elaborated through discussions with housing experts at USDA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). (2014): We will proceed with data collection and exploratory analyses. We will integrate data from different sources and standardize geographic definitions. A sub-committee will be formed to evaluate new housing market statistics and educate the rest of the committee on their potential usefulness. (2015): Research covering all three objectives will be carried out. This will serve as a foundation for most of our peer-reviewed articles, issue briefs, and other publications. Planning will commence on a policy conference to be held in the final year of the project, including negotiations with potential sponsoring agencies. (2016): Production of articles, monographs, policy briefs, and user-friendly web postings will continue through this year, as will presentations at professional meetings and to stakeholder groups. (2017): The final year will include a policy conference and the wrap up of joint publications, policy series, peer-reviewed articles, and other outputs by the committee.
Project Methods
Committee members will collaborate to build databases that all members can access. Most of the work will be at the county level of analysis and will employ nonmetro counties as a proxy for rural and small-town areas. The three objectives share a common set of methodologies. To describe the changing distribution and composition of the rural population, we will primarily use population data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). Data on unemployment and related labor-market indicators come from Bureau of Labor Statistics sources, including their Local Area Unemployment Statistics. Housing data come from the ACS, the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey, and some new data sources (especially related to risky mortgages and foreclosure rates) requiring initial evaluation. We will develop a set of uniform demographic accounting methods, including rates and ratios, standardization, and group and subgroup decomposition (e.g. race and age categories, uniform measures of economic vulnerability). Exploratory data analysis and multivariate statistical techniques will be employed to investigate the determinants and consequences of rural population change during the Great Recession. Aggregate level analysis is frequently affected by spatial autocorrelation; we will use spatial regression analysis, where appropriate, to ensure that parameter estimation is carried out with models specified to account for autocorrelation in the data. As before, we will use geographic information technology (GIS) to visualize and explore the geographic variability of demographic and socioeconomic phenomena. As specific research questions are finalized, other data sources and methodologies will be incorporated, as needed. We may choose to take advantage of longitudinal surveys, such as those conducted as part of the National Institute on Aging's Health and Retirement Survey and the Department of Labor's National Longitudinal Studies. Results from recently-conducted, in-depth field studies carried out by committee members will most likely be integrated into committee output.

Progress 10/01/12 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The state level target audiences for our activities were local decision makers, extension professionals, academics and the general public. The communities of Kansas were especially targeted to disseminate information about the impact of depopulation and aging in place. Outreach was done via presentations, informal meetings and various project websites. At the national level, results from the research group activities were disseminated widely among members of Congress, USDA rural development program managers, state legislatures, major non-governmental organizations. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A specific outreach activity was the establishment of a publication series titles "Population Trends in Post-Recession Rural America" at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://w3001.apl.wisc.edu/. Our research on aging and service provision is among those featured on this website. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The project had three major goals: (1) document the realignment of U.S. nonmetro population growth and decline during the periods before, during, and after the Great Recession of 2006-2009, examine the dynamics of these changes (births, deaths, internal and international migration), and investigate their social and economic determinants, paying close attention to regional and local variation; (2) describe shifts in rural unemployment and investigate linkages between job loss and population dynamics, notably the impact of rising unemployment on shifts in migration flows between nonmetro and metro areas and changes in levels of immigration to rural destinations; and (3) examine dynamics in rural housing markets in light of shifting rural population composition and new economic realities, in particular how increased socioeconomic diversity in rural areas (age, race, household structure, class) alters the demand for different forms of rural housing, how poverty concentration in some areas and wealth in others creates housing stress, and how communities were differentially impacted by the housing-led recession. The outputs from the project reflected the various audiences we intended to reach. The members of this committee have strong records of scholarly publication, and we produced policy-related issue briefs disseminated through a variety of outlets to make research results quickly and easily accessible to policy makers and stakeholders. The demographic analyses provided by such research gave contextual information that help public policy makers and local residents design or modify programs to address important social issues and problems, and decide where public intervention is most needed. Moreover the national and regional level studies produced by this committee enabled state and local decision makers to consider their respective situations in comparative context. Results from W3001 research were disseminated widely among members of Congress, USDA rural development program managers, state legislatures, major non-governmental organizations, and regional, state, and local stakeholder groups. In the five years of W3001, my work has mostly been focusing on Objective 1. Within Objective 1, I was doing research on depopulation and aging in place, as crucial demographic processes for the state of Kansas. In addition, I was working on the impact of natural resource use, particularly irrigation agriculture, on state population trends. My publications and presentations were mostly organized around these themes. During the process, I have become an internationally recognized expert on depopulation, and was invited to give a keynote address at the Foreign Scholar Lecture Series of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo, Japan. This talk has also been published since then. During the period covered by W3001, I was involved in three NSF grants. The second round of NSF Epscor (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) program in Kansas (2010-2013) has launched a research project on climate change and energy. The social science subproject ($850,000 at KSU) investigated farmers' decision making about land use and water conservation, a joint undertaking with agricultural economics, political science, and anthropology. Multiple surveys, a wide variety of agricultural statistics and hundreds of farmer interviews were used to create both land use choice models under various policy scenarios, a field ethnography of the Kansas farmer and a survey on the farmers' community perspectives and place attachment. As a Co-PI, I was part of an interdisciplinary team (civil engineering, landscape architecture, agricultural economics, agronomy, political science and sociology) studying water resources supported by a $1.5 million NSF CNH (Coupled Natural and Human systems) grant between 2009 and 2014. The project, Hyper-extractive Economies and Sustainability: Policy Scenarios for Sustainable Water Use in the High Plains Aquifer, focused on modeling the interaction between social and natural systems in the context of irrigation, food production and rural depopulation. One of its important outcomes was an experimental graduate seminar (Water and Society) taught for the fifth time in 2013. Finally, I was invited to become a faculty mentor on the NSF IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) initiative in 2010. This program solely focused on graduate education regarding the challenges of bioenergy production and utilization through a variety of instructional methods. I continued to work with various stakeholders, including rural community representatives and extension agents. My impression was that their knowledge about the policy implications of aging and retirement migration greatly improved, and they planned to use this knowledge to refine local policies. This was particularly relevant after the "Access to Services Diminishes in Rural America as Populations Age" brief was published at the University of Wisconsin-Madison site. Tracking information revealed that this had been accessed and downloaded from more than 40 states across the nation. In addition, the "International Handbook of Rural Demography", which I co-edited with Katherine Curtis during the W2001 time frame has become a very popular item at Springer. They measure "popularity" via a "usage" metric that counts the number of times a chapter from a Handbook is accessed on-line and downloaded. The "International Handbook of Rural Demography" has received 30,354 downloads, making a significant impact on the scholarship on rural population trends.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: " Brian Thiede, David L. Brown, Scott Sanders, Nina Glasgow and L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2017) "A Demographic Deficit? Local Population Aging and Access to Services in Rural America, 1990-2010." Rural Sociology 82, pp. 44-74.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2016) "Depopulation and its Challenges for Development: An International Comparison." Journal of Population Problems 12, pp. 323-349.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2016) "Population and Development." In: Gregory Hooks (ed.) Sociology of Development Handbook. University of California Press.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r, Joseph Aistrup, Thomas Bulatewicz, Jeffrey Peterson, Stephen Welch and David Steward (2016) "Water and Society: Interdisciplinary Education in Natural Resources." Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, Issue 158, pp. 120-131.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r, Theresa Selfa and Carmen Bain (2016) "Privileged Access and Rural Vulnerabilities: Examining Social and Environmental Exploitation in Bioenergy Development in the American Midwest." Journal of Rural Studies 47, pp. 291-299.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: " Sarah S. Beach and L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2016) "It often takes two income earners to raise a farm: On-farm and off-farm employment in Kansas." Journal of Rural and Community Development 10, pp. 54-74.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2017 Citation: " David L. Brown, Nina Glasgow, Scott Sanders, L�szl� J. Kulcs�r and Brian Thiede (2017) "The organization of services in rural places with extreme population ageing" (presented at the XXVII Congress of the European Society of Rural Sociology, Krakow, Poland, July 24-27, 2017)


Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for our activities are local decision makers, extension professionals, academics and the general public. The communities of Kansas have been targeted to disseminate information about the impact of aging in place and population decline. Outreach was done via refereed presentations, invited talks, and informal meetings. One specific audience for this year was the Governor's Council of Economic Advisors: a targeted talk was given on state demographics based on data collected in our multistate project. Changes/Problems:No major changes were made in the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results of my work in W3001 have been disseminated via the traditional channels: publications, professional conference presentations, and invited talks. The two unique dissemination forums this year were the Governor's Council of Economic Advisors meeting in Topeka, which was attended by Governor Brownback as well, and the prestigious Foreign Scholar Lecture Series of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo where I presented the issue of rural population decline in an international perspective, using Kansas as the U.S. example. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The main activity for the next reporting period is complete the field research for the project on natural decrease and aging. In addition, I have been elected as the incoming president of the W3001 group for 2016-17, therefore I will be preparing to take over administrative responsibilities and write the grant proposal for the next funding cycle.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The group has focused on rural aging and depopulation in this study period. I have started a new project with collaborators from Cornell University, Louisiana State University and Brigham Young University on natural decrease and extreme aging in the US. We have completed three national case studies, with a fourth one scheduled in Kansas (since then this has been completed too, but outside of the time frame of this report). Our research project also includes a national statistical analysis on demographic triggers, resulting in a paper, which was accepted for publication.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: L�szl� J. Kulcs�r, Joseph Aistrup, Thomas Bulatewicz, Jeffrey Peterson, Stephen Welch, and David Steward (2016) "Water and Society: Interdisciplinary Education in Natural Resources". Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, Issue 158, pp. 120-131.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: L�szl� J. Kulcs�r, Theresa Selfa and Carmen Bain (2016) "Privileged Access and Rural Vulnerabilities: Examining Social and Environmental Exploitation in Bioenergy Development in the American Midwest" Journal of Rural Studies 47, pp. 291-299.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Sarah S. Beach and L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2016) "It often takes two income earners to raise a farm: On-farm and off-farm employment in Kansas" Journal of Rural and Community Development 10, pp. 54-74.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2016) Population and Development In: Gregory Hooks (ed.) Handbook of Development Sociology, University of California Press.


Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for our activities are local decision makers, extension professionals, academics and the general public. The communities of Kansas have been targeted to disseminate information about the impact of aging in place and population decline. Outreach was done via refereed presentations, invited talks, and informal meetings. One specific audience for this year was county commissioners in Kansas: a targeted talk was given on state demographics based on data collected in our multistate project. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results of my work in W3001 have been disseminated via the traditional channels: publications, professional conference presentations, and invited talks. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The main activity for the next reporting period is conduct the field research for the project on natural decrease and aging, and write a grant proposal to apply for funding from NIH or NIA (using the results of the case studies). In addition, I have been elected as the incoming president of the W3001 group, therefore I will be preparing to take over administrative responsibilities.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The group has focused on rural aging and depopulation in this study period. I have started a new project with collaborators from Cornell University, Louisiana State University and Brigham Young University on natural decrease and extreme aging in the US. We have secured funds for four case studies, to be conducted in Spring 2016 (one of those will be in Kansas). Our research project also includes a national statistical analysis on demographic triggers, and the case studies will investigate the lived experiences of aging residents. Preliminary results were presented at the annual multistate conference in September 2015. In addition, I have a small project on the population dynamics of places with less than 500 population in Kansas and Nebraska.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: " Cristina Bradatan and L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2015) Comparing Immigrant Education Levels and Resultant Labor Market Outcomes: The European Versus the Native Born Experience in the United States. In: M. Nazrul Hoque and Lloyd B. Potter (eds.) Emerging Techniques in Applied Demography. Dodrecht: Springer.


Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14

Outputs
Target Audience: The target audiences for our activities are local decision makers, extension professionals, academics and the general public. The communities of Kansas have been targeted to disseminate information about the impact of aging in place and population decline. Outreach was done via refereed presentations, invited talks, and informal meetings. One specific audience for this year was rural professionals in Eastern Europe: the W3001 group had three representatives working on a specific outreach program based on American experiences stemming from our multistate project. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The results of my work in W3001 have been disseminated via the traditional channels (publications and conference presentations), as well as via a publicly accessible specific project website set up the Slovak University of Agriculture. This website was available for the international community of professionals since January 2014. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? I am a member of a working group within W3001, which has started a project on natural decrease in rural areas. We have done some preliminary conceptual work, presented at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, as well as at the internal workshop of W3001. We are planning to submit two papers for publication in 2015, and we are currently exploring the opportunities for collaboration with the University of Newcastle on this topic.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The group has focused on rural aging and depopulation in 2014. We have built collaboration with rural development professionals in Eastern Europe, and participated in a series of research meetings, culminating in a three day conference. With our two local partners, the Slovak University of Agriculture (Nitra, Slovakia) and the Nicolaus Copernicus University (Torun, Poland), we have provided important demographic insights into local development challenges for rural communities. This work resulted in a published proceedings, and the best known local peer-reviewed journal, Eastern European Countryside, is planning to publish a special edition with the papers presented at the conference. This activity has provided excellent opportunities for personal development, contrasting local solutions to the same problems in different policy and economic environments.

Publications

  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Barbora Babjakova, Anna Bandlerov�, David L. Brown, Andrzej Kaleta, L�szl� J. Kulcs�r and Joachim Singelmann (eds.) (2014) Social & Economic Transformations Affecting Rural People and Communities in Central & Eastern Europe Since 1990. Proceedings of the Research Conference organized by the Slovak University of Agiculture (Nitra), Nicolaus Copernicus University (Torun) and the Polson Institute for Global Development (Cornell University).
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: L�szl� J. Kulcs�r and Cristina Bradatan (2014) "The graying periphery - aging and community development in rural Romania and Bulgaria" Europe-Asia Studies 66, pp. 794-810.


Progress 01/01/13 to 09/30/13

Outputs
Target Audience: The target audiences for our activities are local decision makers, extension professionals, academics and the general public. The communities of Kansas have been targeted to disseminate information about the impact of aging in place and depopulation. Outreach was done via refereed presentations, invited talks, and informal meetings. One high impact outreach activity was the Congressional Briefing following a major publication by the group on rural aging. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The group has focused on rural aging in 2013. The main event related to that activity was the publication of Rural Aging in 21st Century America, edited by two group members. I had a chapter published in this book. A crucial dissemination activity was the Congressional Briefing on the book, which took place on June 20, 2013, hosted by the Consortium of Social Science Associations. The briefing was given additional attention by being included in the official newsletter of the American Sociological Association in November 2013. While I was not part of the delegation to Washington DC (it conflicted with an international conference in the Netherlands where I gave a paper on population decline in the Great Plains), I participated in the preparation of the material distributed. This was an excellent personal development opportunity to learn how to present research findings to national policy makers. Apart from the professional conference papers I presented, I was invited to talk about rural demography at the Civic Luncheon Lecture Series in Salina. The audience was both the university community at K-State Salina and local stakeholders from the neighboring counties. The talk was streamed over the internet to interested parties as well.

Publications

  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r and Albert Iaroi (2013) "Immigrant Integration and the Changing Public Discourse - The Case of Emporia, Kansas." In: Linda Allegro and Andrew Wood (eds.) Latin American Migrations to the Heartland: Changing Social Landscapes in Middle America. University of Illinois Press. " " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2013) "Rural migration, Europe and North America, 1945 to present." Entry in the Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration edited by Immanuel Ness and Peter Bellwood. John Wiley & Sons. " " Benjamin C. Bolender and L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2013) Retirement Migration to Unconventional Places. In: Nina Glasgow and E. Helen Berry (eds.) Rural Aging in 21st Century America. Dordrecht: Springer.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2013) "Future Population Trends: Will We Be In Kansas Anymore?" (presented at the Civic Luncheon Lecture Series, Salina, KS, October 10, 2013) " " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r and Sarah Beach (2013) "Environment and Community: Contextualizing Farmers Adaptation" (presented at the Kansas NSF EPSCoR 2013 Annual Meeting, Lawrence, KS, October 8, 2013) " " Sarah Beach and L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2013) "It Often Takes Two Incomes to Raise a Farm: On-farm and Off-farm Employment in Kansas" (presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, NY, August 10-13, 2013) " " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r (2013) "Population decline and community development in the Great Plains" (presented at the International Conference on Population Geographies, Groningen, The Netherlands, June 25-28, 2013) " " L�szl� J. Kulcs�r and William Wetherholt (2013) "Trending towards Oblivion: Endangered Towns and Their Demographic Landscape on the Great Plains" (presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, New Orleans, LA, April 11-13, 2013)


Progress 01/01/12 to 12/31/12

Outputs
OUTPUTS: Under the new W3001 project, my activities focused on the first objective: document the realignment of U.S. nonmetro population growth and decline during the periods before, during, and after the Great Recession of 2006-2009, examine the dynamics of these changes (births, deaths, internal and international migration), and investigate their social and economic determinants, paying close attention to regional and local variation. Given the short time since the start of the new project, the research activities have not yet led to publications or conference presentations. However, I gave an invited talk in Kingman County where I discussed the potential impact of the recession in the context of general population decline in rural Kansas: Laszlo J. Kulcsar (2012) "Demographic trends and future prospects: Kingman County, KS" (presented at the Kingman County Activity Center, November 7, 2012). PARTICIPANTS: I am a Co-PI on the NSF CNH grant which includes a number of faculty across the KSU campus (I'm the only sociologist). On the NSF Epscor my status is senior personnel (one of four KSU faculty: two from agricultural economics, one from political science and one from sociology). Both projects have direct links to population trends in Kansas and their impact on agriculture and farming communities. TARGET AUDIENCES: The state level target audiences for our activities are local decision makers, extension professionals, academics and the general public. The communities of Kansas are especially targeted to disseminate information about the impact of population decline and aging in place. Outreach is done via refereed presentations, invited talks, informal meetings and project websites. Results from the research group activities are disseminated widely among members of Congress, USDA rural development program managers, state legislatures, major non-governmental organizations, and regional, state, and local stakeholder groups. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
Similar to the previous years, the invited talk I gave brought the opportunity to discuss the findings with stakeholders and policy makers as well. I was able to use the population estimate model (part of the activities in W2001) to show the long term demographic impact and explain the social and economic consequences in a non-technical way.

Publications

  • No publications reported this period