Description
Book SynopsisA compilation of policy-relevant research by a multidisciplinary group of scholars on the state of families in rural America in the twenty-first century. Examines the impact of economic restructuring on rural Americans and provides policy recommendations for addressing the challenges they face.
Trade Review“This is a timely and important book on a very underresearched and misunderstood topic. As numerous others point out, ‘rural’ America is not just farms and rural areas, and its problems are not all that different in some fundamental ways from urban ones. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in better understanding how global economic changes have affected not only jobs but, crucially, the people who hold them, the places they live, the people they live with. The book will be of interest to academics and nonacademics alike. Policy makers would be particularly well advised to learn from its rich empirical analysis and thoughtful discussion.”
—William W. Falk,University of Maryland
“This volume is a benchmark on responses to economic change in the United States. The editors have done a masterful job in showcasing a breadth of scholarship, reflected collectively in the contributing authors’ interdisciplinary approaches, attention to an array of family, demographic, and economic outcomes, and concern with theoretical as well as policy-related issues. The chapters combine rigorous analysis and detailed implications for public policy in a lucid manner that will be accessible to a variety of audiences. In confronting and comparing rural responses with those documented in urban settings, the chapters provide an innovative corrective to conventional work in sociology, family studies, demography, economics, and policy studies.”
—Linda Lobao,The Ohio State University
“While the troubles facing the banking and housing sectors have served as the focal points of our nation’s economic woes, it’s around the kitchen tables of many rural American families where the pain and strain have been profoundly felt. Regrettably, efforts to examine the multifaceted consequences of economic restructuring on family well-being have been virtually absent—until now. Assembling a veritable ‘who’s who’ among social and behavioral scientists, Smith and Tickamyer have guided the development of an impressive research volume that offers important insights into the array of family-related challenges playing in rural America today as a product of national and global economic forces. The value-added aspect of this volume is the attention that it devotes to policy—to the mix of investments and refinements that policy makers must pursue in order to promote the stability and the long-term vitality of families in rural America.”
—Lionel J. “Bo” Beaulieu,Southern Rural Development Center, Mississippi State University
Table of ContentsContents
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
Foreword
Cynthia “Mil” Duncan
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Kristin E. Smith and Ann Tickamyer
Section 1: Changing Economic Opportunities and Changing Roles
1 Rural Economic Restructuring: Implications for Children, Youth, and Families
Daniel T. Lichter and Deborah Roempke Graefe
2 Employment Hardship Among Rural Men
Leif Jensen and Eric B. Jensen
3 Changing Roles: Women and Work in Rural America
Kristin E. Smith
4 Men Without Sawmills: Job Loss and Gender Identity in Rural America
Jennifer Sherman
Section 2: Family Change, Economic Hardship, and Family Adaptive Strategies
5 Economic Restructuring and Family Structure Change, 1980 to 2000: A Focus on Female-Headed Families with Children
Diane K. McLaughlin and Alisha J. Coleman-Jensen
6 Patterns of Family Formation and Dissolution in Rural America and Implications for Well-Being
Anastasia Snyder
7 Job Characteristics and Economic Survival Strategies: The Effect of Economic Restructuring and Marital Status in a Rural County
Margaret K. Nelson
8 Economic Hardship, Parenting, and Family Stability in a Cohort of Rural Adolescents
Katherine Jewsbury Conger
Section 3: Low-Wage Employment
9 Parents’ Work Time in Rural America: The Growth of Irregular Schedules
Elaine McCrate
10 Low-Wage Employment Among Minority Women in Nonmetropolitan Areas: A Decomposition Analysis
Marlene Lee
11 Regional Variation of Women in Low-Wage Work Across Rural Communities
Cynthia D. Anderson and Chih-Yuan Weng
Section 4: Work and Family Policy
12 Strengthening Rural Communities Through Investment in Youth Education, Employment, and Training
Liliokanaio Peaslee and Andrew Hahn
13 Child Care in Rural America
Nicole D. Forry and Susan K. Walker
14 Health Insurance in Rural America
Deborah Roempke Graefe
15 Livelihood Practices in the Shadow of Welfare Reform
Ann Tickamyer and Debra Henderson
16 Poverty, Work, and the Local Environment: TANF and EITC
Domenico Parisi, Steven Michael Grice, Guangqing Chi, and Jed Pressgrove
Conclusions
Ann Tickamyer and Kristin E. Smith
References
List of Contributors
Index
