Perceived Local Job Prospects and School Connectedness in a Struggling Rural Economy: A Life-Course Perspective

• In Event: 157 - Regular Session. Rural Contexts as Spaces of Inequality, Power, and Identity

Abstract

In the late 2000s, the closing of pulp and paper mills in the rural northeastern United States contributed to economic decline in the region and to rising concerns about population decline due to out-migration among local youth and emerging adults in search of occupational or educational opportunities. In this context, and drawing on a life-course framework, the present study used four waves of panel data from the population of 7th and 11th grade public school students in a rural northeastern U.S. county to explore if: the county unemployment rate was related to perceived local job prospects; school connectedness was related to perceived local job prospects over time; and the effects of county unemployment and school connectedness on perceived local job prospects varied by cohort. Initially, changes in respondents’ perceptions about local job prospects paralleled shifts in local unemployment similarly for both cohorts; yet, after the older cohort respondents had completed high school, their perceived job prospects fell sharply, while perceptions among the younger cohort remained stable. School connectedness was associated with positive perceptions about local job prospects, net of socioeconomic factors, over time, and particularly among the older cohort respondents. Between-cohort comparisons, when each was in 12th grade, showed no cohort differences in the effect of school connectedness on perceived local job prospects despite variations in the age-linked timing of the most dramatic rise in unemployment during the study (between 2008 and 2009). Findings highlight the lasting importance of school connectedness for teens and adults raised in struggling rural economies.

Authors

• Karen T Van Gundy, University of New Hampshire

• Cesar Rebellon, University of New Hampshire

• Eleanor M. Jaffee, University of New Hampshire

• Nena F. Stracuzzi, University of New Hampshire

• Erin Hiley Sharp, University of New Hampshire

• Corinna Jenkins Tucker, University of New Hampshire