Recipient Organization
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
1680 MADISON AVENUE
WOOSTER,OH 44691
Performing Department
College of Human Ecology
Non Technical Summary
Rural communities face a wide range of economic growth and development issues ranging from changing economic structure to public service provision. A recent Congressional Briefing on the changing demographics of rural America, "Changing Demographics Reshape Rural America" (Population Reference Bureau, 2017) noted that around 2010, for the first time rural counties began experiencing an overall population loss, reflecting out-migration of young adults, decreasing births, and older adults aging in place. Populations with large shares of old, poor, or minorities have different needs for medical care, legal assistance, and social services, yet rural areas characterized by chronic out-migration are unlikely to attract highly educated professionals to provide those services as these areas lack urban amenities, good schools, and high-quality health care. A related area is retirement/wealth distribution issues, as we are facing the retirement of the first generation to fully embrace individual retirement accounts, which could lead to an intergenerational shift in wealth which didn't occur with pension-based systems. Rural areas are also more diverse now than they were 20 years ago, as jobs in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and food processing brought an influx of immigrants.Additionally, U.S. military veterans are disproportionately represented in rural areas. Since 36 percent of veterans who use the Veteran's Administration (VA) for health care live in rural areas, distances to VA facilities pose challenges. These veterans could be an important resource for rural communities, bringing educational skills and leadership experiences. Finally, considering health, urban mortality rates have been dropping faster than rural rates since 1985. "Deaths of despair" due to suicide, alcohol abuse, and drug overdoses are most prevalent in rural parts of the nation. "Accumulated disadvantage" related to low education levels, unemployment, poor mental and physical health, and isolation puts rural residents at higher risk of premature death (Population Reference Bureau, 2017). USDA's Research, Education, and Economics (REE) Action Plan (February, 2012) presents a vision to address these rural problems using "Impact-driven agricultural science" to expand economic opportunity through innovation, promote sustainability and conservation, enhance environmental quality, and improve quality of life for farmers, farm workers, and society. Of the seven goals identified in the REE plan, four are relevant to the new NE1079 proposal:1. Rural-Urban Interdependence and Prosperity. While many rural communities have taken advantage of new economic opportunities, others have experienced persistent outmigration, poverty, and/or stagnant labor markets. How rural areas position themselves through diversification and enhanced entrepreneurship to better compete in a global environment where skills, knowledge, and innovation are key drivers of economic growth will be key to enhanced resiliency. Rural communities need to take advantage of market opportunities (e.g. local/regional/organic food systems) and technologies (e.g. broadband, green technologies, and renewable energies). There is also a need to establish determinants of rural prosperity and develop indicators to measure regional assets and performance.2. Sustainable Use of Natural Resources. Technologies and management prescriptions need to be developed to produce needed products while conserving natural resources, and provide reliable water sources for energy, ecosystem services, and water-rights claims of Native Americans.3. Education and Science Literacy. Decreases in the rural workforce will exacerbate labor costs in rural areas; economic conditions in rural areas already make it difficult to attract and retain workers, particularly young people who leave rural areas for better social and career options.4. Responding to Climate and Energy Needs. Agricultural and forestry producers, land managers, and other decision makers need tools to help with greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation.It is notable that there is substantial overlap between these goals and the recent Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Agriculture and Rural Prosperity in America (The White House, 2017) which establishes an Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity. Some of the functions of this task force include identifying legislative, regulatory, and policy changes to promote rural America agriculture, economic development, job growth, infrastructure improvements, technological innovation, energy security, and quality of life, specifically promoting long-term, sustainable rural development, expanding educational opportunities for students in rural communities (especially in agricultural fields), ensuring access to a reliable workforce, and issues regarding property rights, public lands, and advancing traditional and renewable energy production.Recent and ongoing projects in these areas by members of NE1049 include local foods and sustainable small scale agriculture, water and environmental issues pertaining to rural communities, rural amenities and economic growth and development, rural tourism, agricultural tourism and recreation, rural access to information technology, links between broadband provision and employment, impacts of state tax and expenditure limitations on state and local governments, economic impacts of renewable energy industries on the local economy, and new measures to implement the community capitals framework. In its 2017 annual meeting, the group identified three primary research areas which link to the priorities set out by REE and the Interagency Task Force on Agricultural and Rural Prosperity around which it wishes to engage in the coming years: Rural Entrepreneurship and Community Well-being; Community Resilience; and Energy and Land Use policies in rural areas. In developing a vision for the next iteration of the research project, we note that many rural areas continue the economic shift from extractive industries to retirement or tourism based economies, while some regions are moving toward energy development (e.g. fracking). Changes in labor availability in rural areas, due partly to population decline, may cause substantial shifts in economic opportunity. If labor becomes more expensive, more automation may result. Land use issues also may play a major role in development and change in rural areas, with proposed changes in federal policies, federal land and water management, and land ownership which could affect income and employment. Development of renewable energy sources like wind and solar also have the potential to cause changes in land use and economic structure in rural areas. More "traditional" energy sources also affect local conditions, with the siting of pipelines and powerlines creating both opportunities and controversy. These issues and the research they will motivate fit well under the goals outlined by REE's Action Plan, as described in the objectives listed in the following section.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Enhancing rural economic opportunities and entrepreneurship. This is an exceptionally broad, multi-faceted objective which encompasses both the need for advancing the theoretical structure of community economic development and the need for empirical, focused, policy relevant research. Some of the areas which NE1049 researchers have pursued and will expand in the new project are discussed in the comments section. a. The Theory of “Community capitals” (Flora and Flora 1993, 2008). These seven community capitals include built, financial, political, social, human, cultural and natural capitals (Flora and Gillespie 2009). NE1049 researchers have done substantial research on social capital over the past five years (e.g. Goetz and Rupasinga, 2006; Halstead and Deller, 2015). Research in the capitals overlaps with many sub-topics in both this and the second proposal objective, and helps in the pursuit of a broad paradigm for economic development.
b. Issues of wealth/income distribution and rural economic development. Country-level studies have largely found that income inequality and economic growth are inversely related (e.g. Person and Tabellini, 1994; Alesina and Rodrik, 1994; Banerjee and Duflo, 2000). Income and wealth distribution is also an issue in rural areas. Bishaw and Posey (2016) noted that rural Americans have lower median household incomes than urban households, but rural areas have lower poverty rates than their urban counterparts.
c. Non-agricultural development opportunities. A particular area of research for NE1049 has been the economics of local agriculture. However, many rural communities have tried to expand into tourism and recreation with mixed success; in any case, employment opportunities generated in some of these sectors tend to be relatively low-income. Diversification of local economies (e.g. export base and local agriculture; business attraction and retention) through both expanding the small business sector (Eschker, Gold and Lane, 2017) and fostering retention and expansion of existing businesses (Halstead and Deller, 1997) are key development objectives which clearly affect resiliency in the face of natural and human caused shocks to the system. How entrepreneurs behave socially, exchange information, and procure resources and establish reciprocity, are key areas of research (Markeson and Deller 2015).
d. Infrastructure needs, development, and deficiencies. Infrastructure is a broad concept, including both Economic Overhead Capital (which includes roads, bridges, powerlines, etc.) and Social Overhead Capital (health, education, etc.) (Hansen, 1965). Built infrastructure has been researched by team members since the 1980s (e.g. Johnson et al. 1988). Such investments have the potential to affect virtually all the subtopics in both proposed objectives. Specific topics under scrutiny by NE1049 researchers include impacts of broad band internet availability/deficiency on economic development and availability and affordability of child care as a deterrent to availability of affordable labor, and its effects on rural quality of life.
e. Chronic and progressive labor availability problems, related to the issues raised in the third REE goal listed above. If labor becomes more expensive, more automation may result (Devaraj et al. 2017). This can cause economic distortion, and affect labor participation rates, economic goal setting, and other key features at the community level
f. The impact of entrepreneurship on rural areas. There is evidence from previous research that entrepreneurs can contribute to growth in rural areas (e.g. Sepehns et al. 2013; Rupasingha and Goetz, 2013) and understanding what types of policies can contribute to this growth will be critical to deal with the restructuring of rural areas.
Project Methods
A primary motivation of this project is to continue and redirect the work performed under Regional Research Project NE1049, reestablishing the multi-state research effort in the context of the USDA REE Action Plan and its vision of using impact-driven agricultural science to expand economic opportunity, and the goals of the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity established by Presidential Executive Order. NE1749 will continue to build on the many past and current outreach and multi-state activities. While the project has two, arguably broad, objectives, research questions and methods for each overlap and complement the other.Two important forms of cross-state cooperation are evident in our proposed research. First, a large share of the research will be conducted collaboratively across states. Second, research methods and approaches which have been developed in one state have historically been subsequently employed by researchers in other states. Although many challenges are the same, states also differ. This interstate variation helps to statistically identify relationships between dependent and explanatory variables. Thus, interstate collaboration provides more suitable cross-section time series databases. Multi-state collaboration also lends valuable support to innovation, which is by definition the application of an existing invention to a new purpose. We will build on our knowledge base, better use our resources through the synergies of collaboration, help create more efficient rural policy, and help improve the sustainability and vitality of rural communities. Additionally, rural areas in the United States are not homogeneous and the impact of policies may vary across regions. By conducting analysis in various types of rural regions using similar methods we can improve our understanding of the impact of policies on various types of rural areas which can be used to improve policymaking.Researchers within the group have the expertise and are conducting research in each of the proposal's focus areas and are poised to extend this work. For example, members have and continue to work on issues such as sustainability and resilience of communities and local governments in periods of crises (Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin); rural change and migration (Arkansas, Iowa, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin); and local/regional foods and agri-tourism (Colorado, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, New Hampshire). The researchers in the group will employ a variety of social science methods to address the research objectives, bringing to bear the appropriate methods for different topics, and allowing for triangulation across methods and states for broader interpretation of findings. Surveys, interviews, and focus groups allow for in-depth examination of particular issues; for example, surveys of consumer behavior regarding local food purchase. Quantitative methods include regression analysis, input-output modeling and spatial econometrics. Expansion of use of GIS methods will allow the group to expand analysis of the spatial evolution of municipal government structures, of community capitals, and of workforce supports such as access to child care. The collaboration of researchers with research and Extension appointments will enhance cross-fertilization of ideas on methods and relevance to rural concerns. Examples of specific methods being used by project members are presented in the following two sub-sections.Objective 1. Enhancing Rural Economic Opportunities and Entrepreneurship. Supporting the goals of USDA's REE Action Plan, the methods employed to meet the research objectives of this project will increase understanding of the changing determinants of rural prosperity and develop indicators to measure specific community and regional assets and outcomes.In our long-run community sustainability focus we take a community capitals or community assets framework approach. There are, however, primarily two methodological challenges with the approach. First, the comprehensiveness of the capitals or community assets can drive the research agenda in several different directions at the same time. Second, many of these capitals are fairly straightforward to describe from a theoretical perspective but extremely difficult to quantify. On-going research by Penn State, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and other project members use various types of data to build a range of social capital measures. From a methodological perspective, this follows the extensive work that has been undertaken exploring the relationship of natural capital and rural economic growth and development as well as the role of the creative class, one interpretation of human capital, in rural economic growth.Objective 2. Factors and Policies Affecting the Resiliency of Rural Communities. Our objective here is to identify and analyze policies and strategies contributing to the viability and resiliency of communities in responding to economic and policy changes as well as natural and human-made shocks. Our focus is on long-run socio-economic sustainability and ability of communities to respond to changes and to develop economically. The challenges that communities have faced, and will continue to face, have come from natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and tornados, as well as human-caused shocks such as major changes in tax and health policy, and regional and national recessions.?Climate change and the growing exposure to climate-related extreme events present another major challenge for rural communities not only on agriculture but also on health and poverty. Synthesizing county-level socio-economic data with climate-related extreme events data from NOAA and applying quasi-experimental design methods, researchers at Oregon propose to modify the community economic resilience measure in Han and Goetz (2015) to better quantify rural community resilience to climate-related extreme events. The researchers will also explore how rural community resilience to climate-related extreme events are associated with ecological/environmental, socio-economic, infrastructural and social-capital related factors. Impact of future climate change on rural community resilience will be simulated. This project is in progress and will help to shed light on how to incorporate climate change in the development planning of rural communities. It will also help to promote the climate-resilient development strategies of the United Nation Development Program because the climate-resilient development is not only about climate-friendly development but also about the communities' ability to adapt to climate changes and the related extreme events. The latter might be a more pressing concern considering the first-ever period (2010-2015) of rural population decline in America.