Upward Mobility of Low-Income Youth in Metropolitan, Micropolitan, and Rural America

Abstract

We analyze county-level social, demographic, and economic data in U.S. counties to explore how economic mobility in the United States varies across the geography of the rural-urban interface. We reveal that micropolitan areas—small and medium urban centers—appear to play a unique role in the geography of intergenerational economic mobility. Micropolitan areas help to define the blurred boundaries of the new rural-urban interface, and play a unique and potentially powerful role in supporting the upward mobility of low-income youth. In some geographic areas, micropolitan counties serve as cores of nonmetropolitan America, supporting upward mobility in ways that take advantage of their density and scale. In other domains, they are relatively low-density transition zones between remote noncore rural counties and metropolitan America, supporting upward mobility of low-income youth in ways that exploit the opportunities and reveal weaknesses associated with nonmetropolitan small size, lack of density, and limited technological capacity.

Transmission of Work Attitudes and Values: Comparisons, Consequences, and Implications

“…This may refer to the families from which individuals originate (e.g., Schönpflug 2008), the schooling they have experienced (e.g., Chapoulie 2017), and the workplaces in which they worked (e.g., b. Weber et al 2017), but also to the country in which they are living (e.g., Hofstede 1984). public policy is directed at the modification of these contexts in which people live, identifying specific target groups and designing policy measures to bring about behavioral changes (Tosun and Treib 2018).…”

“…Therefore, all contributions emphasize that transmission of work values will be affected and conditioned by characteristics of the social environments in which people are living. This may refer to the families from which individuals originate (e.g., Schönpflug 2008), the schooling they have experienced (e.g., Chapoulie 2017), and the workplaces in which they worked (e.g., B. Weber et al 2017), but also to the country in which they are living (e.g., Hofstede 1984).…”

Opportunity and Place: Latino Children and America’s Future

“…Micropolitan counties, which include places of 10,000 to 49,999 population, seemingly provide a spatial scale and population size and density that is positively associated with upward intergenerational mobility among poor children. They argued that micropolitan counties represented a “unique geography” at the rural-urban interface that function “much like metropolitan areas in their support of upward mobility, revealing a blurred border between metro and micro areas and a bright boundary between the noncore and the metro and micro counties” (Weber et al 2017, 120). This study did not examine spatial patterns of intergenerational mobility among Hispanic children.…”

“…Intergenerational mobility . Chetty et al (2014) and Weber et al (2017) have documented enormous spatial heterogeneity in patterns of intergenerational mobility and the local-area characteristics that give rise to these differences. Today, Hispanic children benefit from living in counties with higher rates of intergenerational mobility.…”

Regional Solutions for Rural and Urban Challenges

“…These influence the way in which local structures, institutions, actors, and processes confront and respond to external economic, political, cultural, and environmental shocks. Seemingly benign policy changes can produce unexpectedly divisive reactions (Lichter and Brown 2011;Weber et al 2017). 4.…”