Study: rural childhood makes future success more likely - Entrepreneur Generations

County impact on children's future earnings

Last year a Stanford University study found that children who grow up in the most rural areas are more likely to earn more money as adults. A recent Penn State study corroborates the Stanford study's findings and also found that five "community characteristics associated with upward mobility have different effects in rural and urban locations," Kristen Devlin of Penn State News reports for The Daily Yonder.

Specifically, kids are more likely to succeed if they live in a community with fewer single-mother households, a lower high-school dropout rate, lower income inequality, a greater share of jobs with commutes of 15 minutes or less, and more social capital (loosely defined as the networks of relationships in a community).

The researchers found that short commutes helped rural counties much more than they helped urban counties, while higher dropout rates hurt urban areas more than rural ones. But "the researchers found that there are different factors at work in the metro counties, such as better public services, including child care and transportation, that are helping to buffer the negative effects of single-mother households and income inequality," Devlin reports. Only social capital helps rural and urban counties at about the same rate.

Stephan Goetz, a Penn State professor of agricultural and regional economics, director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, and study co-author, told Devlin the study proves that different approaches are needed to help children succeed: "There are different factors at work in rural and urban places . . . If we want to enhance the upward income mobility of low-income youth, we need place-based policies that specifically address these differences."

The study used data from the Equality of Opportunity Project, the U.S. Census, and the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development.

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