Rural youth are now graduating from high school at rates comparable to their peers in urban and suburban schools, however far fewer rural youth pursue postsecondary education. Using a comparative case study method, we explore postsecondary preparation efforts at three rural school districts. Each case represents a different classification of rural: fringe, distant, and remote. We find that while all three districts offered similar postsecondary preparation programs, the amount and array of available course offerings and levels of additional support provided by the community differed. We also explore how the values and philosophies of school administrators shaped the postsecondary preparation efforts. These findings are considered through the lens of previous research on factors that influence the educational outcomes of rural youth, including literature on rural brain drain.

Research on youth and adolescents increasingly suggests that youths' aspirations are complex, multidimensional constructs. This is especially the case for rural youth, who may face conflicting goals when considering their educational, occupational, and residential aspirations. However, few studies have explored rural youths' aspirations from a MultiDimensional perspective. Using data from the younger cohort of the Rural Youth Education study, this research applies latent class analysis to examine the heterogeneity of rural youths' educational, occupational, and residential aspirations. Five distinct subgroups of youth are identified (1) ambitious stayers (27 percent), (2) ambitious yet uncertain youth (28 percent), (3) typical achievers (13 percent), (4) unambitious movers (8 percent), and (5) typical stayers (24 percent). These five subgroups of youth differ in their aspirations, the certainty of those aspirations, and perceived relationships among aspirations. Subsequent multinomial analysis shows strong associations of family, school, and community characteristics with youths' aspirational profiles. Youth with better family economic resources and good parent–child relationships are more likely to fall into the “typical achiever” category, relative to the other four categories. Understanding the interrelationship of rural youth's aspirations can help policymakers and community members develop strategies to assist rural youth in achieving an array of future goals.

Globalised labour migration and remittances can help alleviate household poverty and provide supplemental income in many countries. Kyrgyzstan, like other Central Asian countries, has experienced dramatic geopolitical changes, economic reform, and rapid demographic shifts in the post-Soviet-Union era. Based on measurements of GDP, it is one of the most remittancedependent countries in the world. This study uses data from the Life in Kyrgyzstan Study collected from 2011 to 2013 to break down household budgets into eight consumption categories as part of a detailed analysis of how varying remittance receipt is related to household spending. We address two methodological concerns: (1) the endogeneity of remittances and (2) population heterogeneity. In so doing, we find remittances have limited effects on household spendingwhile changes in remittances do yield small changes on the budget shares of food and medical expenses, no effects were found on other consumption shares. These results suggest that households in Kyrgyzstan may take remittances as permanent income and proportionally alter consumption shares along with changes in remittances. By focusing on a country whose GDP relies heavily on remittances, the findings increase our understanding of how remittances affect spending at the household level.

Prior research on the impacts of boomtowns on youth provides mixed results. Recent qualitative work suggests youth are ambivalent about change associated with extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. The Rural Youth Education longitudinal study of youth in rural Pennsylvania provides a unique opportunity to examine youth views about their communities before and during development of the Marcellus Shale. We use two waves of data from 10 rural school districts to assess differences in youth reports of how much they liked their community pre‐Marcellus (2005) and during Marcellus activity (2009), creating a natural experiment. Youth characteristics, aspirations, perceptions of job and educational opportunities, and views about their community are included in multinomial multivariate logistic regression models to predict how much youth like their community. We find no difference in youth liking their community pre‐Marcellus, but a larger share of youth in communities experiencing Marcellus activity by 2009 like their community “a lot” than those in areas not affected. The Marcellus effect strengthens when controls for other factors typically associated with extraction activity and views of community are included in the model, suggesting other, unmeasured aspects of Marcellus‐related activity influence how much youth like their community.