Disparities in Human Capital and Place-Based Community Development: FY 2003-2005

• In Event: 420 - Research Poster Session. Communicating Sociology

Abstract

Community development can be categorized into investment in places and investment in people. No existing studies to this author’s knowledge probe the relationship between communities’ levels of place versus human capital investments. It is not known whether these types of funding are positively related or if communities tend to rely on one type of community development over the other. This paper is an attempt to provide a preliminary empirical inquiry into this question using a large, cross-national data set and a spatial lag regression model. This paper aims to be of general relevance to the community development and spatial inequality literatures. Spatial lag regression is used to examine per capita federal community investment for the FY 2003-2005 period. A jurisdictional need model combined with an integrated model of regional processes is used to select appropriate county-level social and economic variables. Overall, findings suggest that place-based investment and human capital investment are distributed to different types of communities. Communities with higher need tend to receive more human capital investment, while communities with higher labor force quality and extractive industries tend to receive higher per capita place-based investment. This suggests that communities may be overly reliant on one development strategy. This may affect the long-term prospects of places that receive high human capital investment, because residents can take their skills/knowledge outside the community to seek better job opportunities. These findings are thus a cautionary note for federal community development policy.

Author

• Danielle Rose Deemer, The Ohio State University