Rural Sociology Exam 3
Health
- A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmary" - A basic human need - These people can be more successful
Persistent Poverty
- Counties with 20% or more of their population living at or below the federal poverty line for the last thirty years are "persistently poor counties" - Poor rural areas are more likely to be persistently poor than poor urban areas - NOT randomly distributed ----Concentrated in less developed regions: Rio Grande Valley, Appalachia, and Mississippi Delta
Population Health
- Health outcomes of a group of individuals, including distributions of such outcomes within the group - Groups can be based on geography, race, ethnicity, language, or other arrangements of people - Those who study ____________ are concerned with: Health outcomes -what impacts health? How has health changed - What are the public policies and interventions that can improve health outcomes? - ___________________ draws attention to structural impacts on group health outcomes
Individual Level Poverty
- Holds individuals responsible for their circumstances - Behaviors/attributes perpetuate poverty - Closely tied to American values of self-reliance, persistence, and meritocracy - "Anyone can be successful with hard work and persistence" - "Culture of Poverty" explanation
Relative Poverty
- How individuals or families compare with a nation's distribution of income and/or other types of valued resources (inequality) - Focuses on standards of living within given context - Typically uses median measures (such as income) to draw lines
Structural-Level Poverty
- Identifies institutional and/or political factors as contributing to poverty - Job availability - Social safety net - Discrimination - Recognizes how macro-level change (economic, social, etc.) impacts individuals and households - This is how sociologists look at poverty -and I ask you to do the same while thinking like a sociologist in this class
Absolute Poverty
- People and/or families that fall below a threshold of material wellbeing - Focuses on basic human needs - Constant rate - Uses the "poverty line" - Can compare internationally ($1.90/day)
Ethnicity
- Refers to particular geographic origins, cultural beliefs, practices, and/or behaviors that are associated with a distinct racial group or groups" - Nationality or ancestry - Language - Culture
Race
- Refers to the way in which different human populations have been identified and categorized on the basis of particular physical attributes" - Skin color - Facial features - Hair texture/color
Rural Health Crisis
- Rural-urban health disparities - Inadequate access to (and quality of) health care infrastructure - Socio-economic structure
Socialization
- The process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable to society through various social institutions (formal and informal) - Internalizing norms and ideologies - We learn at a young age that there are different expectations, behaviors, attitudes, and expressions for boys and girls
Rigid Families
- Tied to traditional gender roles - Men struggling with their inability to be the sole provider (and resistance to take on other roles) - Marital and family tensions
- Traditionally a coal and manufacturing town, but suffered from deindustrialization and globalization - In 2000, Hispanics made up < 1%, but by 2012, they comprised of 37% of the population - Hispanic immigrants chose Hazelton because: - Low cost of living and cheaper, available housing - Availability of entry-level jobs in the service industry - Chain migration
Hazelton, PA
- Transformation of health care , as a whole, has negatively impacted rural areas - Goals of being cost efficient , and even making a profit, has disenfranchised many rural residents - "US health policy primarily focuses on the health care system and its ability to respond to sick individuals' demands for health care" - The author proposes that there should really be a shift to focus on health rather than health care (obesity, smoking, heart disease, etc.)
Health Care Policy
The "family farm" model has benefitted heterosexual and cisgender farmers - Literature notes that often times, queer farmers find and create pockets of support in rural and farming communities (closely tied to alternative agriculture)
Hoffelmeyer (2021) Article
- In the U.S., income thresholds are used to measure poverty - In 2020, the threshold for a family of four (2 adults, 2 children) was set at an annual income of $26,246 - This is the decided minimum amount that a family can live on (rent/mortgage, utilities, food, clothing, transportation, childcare, health care, etc.) - Median household income in 2020 was $67,521
How do you measure poverty
California - Small, isolated community - Dependent on the timber industry for nearly a century - 1996 -Sawmill closure - People chose to leave and find work elsewhere - OR people chose to stay and had to find a different job sector
Background Sherman 2009 "Golden Valley"
- Closure of rural hospitals - Strain on local infrastructure that does exist - Greater need to travel further distances for basic needs and services - Can lead to poor health outcomes
Impact of Lack of Rural Health Care Infrastrutre
- Rising poverty rates from in-migrants - Change in housing structure and availability -Change in demographic structure - Impact on social and public services
Impacts of this in-migration on Riverside
- Wave 1: Moved from NYC to Suburbs in search of cheaper housing and job prospects - Wave 2: After being pushed out by rising rent prices, moved to Riverside because of cheap and available housing
Migration Pattern
-The problem is structural - "A lot of the places that are poor are poor because of the way they have historically developed or not developed" (Tickamyer) - Some sources of the problems "span widely" and are "rooted deeply" - Racism, classism, prejudice, and market forces occur everywhere - Poor people stand to lose a lot by moving - "You're safest if you stay put. That's where your family networks are." (Franklin)
Moving won't solve poor people's problems, why?
And in rural areas, these numbers are even higher...
Nationwide, Blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics have higher poverty rates and lower educational attainment rates
- Historical events have greatly impacted all aspects of life for Blacks living in rural areas - Slavery - Reconstruction - Jim Crow - History of disenfranchisement and lack of access to land ownership in agriculture - Rural Blacks are overwhelmingly concentrated in persistent poverty counties (primarily in the South) - "The Black Belt" highlights intersectionality -race, place, and poverty - The Great Migration -many Blacks left the South in search of manufacturing/industrial jobs in the North, but decades later, the South saw higher rates of Black in-migration again
Blacks in Rural Areas
An increase in Morality rates
Compared to urban areas, rural areas are experiencing...
Poverty
Conditions in which a person, family, or household lacks sufficient resources with which to access basic sustenance
-Flexibility allowed families to avoid many negative outcomes that typically come with job loss/unemployment -Flexibility allowed families to avoid many negative outcomes that typically come with job loss/unemployment - Some men in the study were able to become flexible with their gender role, shifting their understanding of what it means to be "masculine" (particularly with regard to conceptions of fatherhood) - Rural men are more flexible about their masculine identity than found by previous scholars
Findings for sherman 2009 article
- Used alternative agriculture as a strategy to overcome the perceived barrier of heteronormativity in agriculture - "Self-selected" to find and create accepting communities - "Just another farmer" - Downplay identity differences - Helped to emphasize sameness - Aided in avoiding potential conflicts (customers, other farmers, etc.)
Findings in Hoffelmeyer (2021) Article
Rural America is viewed as having "traditional" values and roles - Heterosexuality - Cis-gender - The "family farm" emphasizes a farmer and the farm wife
Gender and Rural Socialization
-Cheap and Available Housing - Close to social support offices - Close to services - Social factors - Knew people in the area - NOT employment prospects
What are the Structural motivations
Minorities Women Children People with disabilities People with less educational attainment
What certain sub-populations are at higher risk for being in poverty?
- Rural Blacks are highly clustered in the South - Rural Latinos are highly clustered in the Southwest - Rural American Indian populations are clustered in the West and Southwest
What is the regional variation
- Traditionally, poverty has been most concentrated (and most visible) in metropolitan cores - BUT...nonmetro poverty rates are higher than metro poverty rates
What is the trend of metro and nonmetro poverty rates over the last few decades?
-Most had very recently moved to the county/area - Most welfare applicants were single parents (typically a mother and 1-2 children) - Many said they had "no marketable skill" for employment - Over 1/3 reported a disability or health problem
Who Were the In-Migrants?
-RuralHealth Care Infrastructure - Aging populations with health care needs Shortage of facilities and workers/volunteers - Lack of adequate training - Lack of adequate equipment and technology
Why Rural areas are at a disadvantage
- Geography is one contributing factor to disparities -this includes rurality - The needs and challenges of rural populations are different than that of urban populations - There is a need to target rural health, rural health care services, health care infrastructure, etc. - There is a need to focus on population health - Current health policies are helpful for healthy, insured people which is not necessarily the average rural person
Why focus on Rural Health Care Policy
- Lack of income - Lack of access to healthcare or childcare - Lack of access to social services - Diminished educational or employment opportunities - Limited political power - Exposure to unsafe or unsatisfactory living situations
Why is poverty a multi-dimensional concept?
- Push-back from long-term residents - Many felt their jobs were being threatened - Others thought there was a change in crime rates - Puerto Ricans were targeted despite being U.S. citizens - Some people thought immigration could help "revitalize" the town - First response was to create legislation to exclude
Outcome for Hazelton
-Developed a "Family Services Collaborative" to help immigrants - Access to resources - Expanding ESL(financial services) programs - Translating documents - Support programs and integration trainings - In 2008, provided extra support after ICE came to town (specifically for children who might have detained parents)
Outcome for St.James MN
While moving can certainly improve an individual's circumstances, the trend means that the people who get left behind tend to be older, poorer, and less educated.
Outmigration is truly problematic for rural areas becuase
- This podcast points out the societal and structural-level conditions that contribute to (the cyclical nature of) poverty - Trying to stop the idea that poor people are poor because they are lazy and lack personal responsibility
Poverty Podcast
-The poverty threshold is random / arbitrary - In-kind income is often not taken into consideration - Does not take geographic variation into consideration
Problems with the Federal Poverty Line
- It has no intrinsic meaning -society has decided it is meaningful and has used it to categorize people - We use these categories to associate certain characteristics or behaviors with certain groups - These myths are socially constructed and are not related to reality of human capabilities or behavior
Race is a Social Construct
There are larger, structural challenges for population health: - Educational attainment - Minority status - Income - Population age - These are often compounded with rurality
Rural Social and Economic Conditions
Which drastically increases their risk of experiencing poverty
Rural minority groups face a "double jeopardy"
-This has been a persistent trend for decades - Rural areas have higher rates of mortality -among children, adults, and for specific causes of death - Rural areas have higher prevalence of chronic health conditions
Rural-Urban Health Disparities
- Acceptance and Tolerance - Oppression, marginalization, and persecution..... But... - Queer people DO live in rural America! - 3-5% of rural residents identify as LGBTQ+ - These identities do not have to be in conflict- they can coexist
Rurality and Sexuality
- Had Hispanic immigrants coming in the 1970s/80s (mostly single men) to work in meat processing plants - In the 1990s, "re-marketed" immigrant to try and bring Hispanic families
St. James MN
- Queer visibility in rural communities is challenging - The desire (and need) to gain acceptance in rural and agrarian communities - Should queer people alter their expression and behavior to be accepted? - If queer people have "passing privileges", do they stay closeted? - Some chose "strategic invisibility" to gain acceptance and avoid discrimination - Many visible farmers who advertised as queer-owned, etc. had overwhelmingly positive experiences, especially with other queer people in agriculture - Although often overlooked in research, queerness does play an important role in how farmers engage in agriculture, particularly in rural communities
Strategic invisibility vs. visibility
- Systems and structures put into place that disadvantage minority populations - Redlining is one of the most well-known forms of systemic racism, but we see it in so many different aspects of life: 1. Wealth 2. Employment 3. Education 4. Homeownership 5. Healthcare 6. Incarceration - It plays out in both rural and urban communities! - Must be recognized and acknowledged for change to be made
Systemic (or Institutional) Racism
- Neighborhood and built environment - Health and health care - Social and community context - Education - Economic Stability
The 5 facets of the "Social Determinants of Health"
-100 miles from NYC and 30 miles outside of Albany - 1970s: significant population decline due to the loss of manufacturing and extractive industries - 1980s: population growth due to the in-migration of many low-income people/families
"Riverside"
Flexible Families
-Men are more able to refocus their conceptions of masculinity to match their current reality - Experienced less strife and more satisfaction in their marriage and family life
-Diverse population! - 310 federal reservations located in 33 states (largely rural) - 560 tribes recognized federally - Different tribes have different identities, cultures, and languages - Legacies of colonization, displacement, and persecution - Now concentrated in the West and Southwest - Indian tribes are recognized as having a "sovereign status" - They have the authority to control tribal affairs (education, public safety, land use, economic development, etc. - The U.S. government is supposed to "protect and preserve" the interests of tribes and tribal members - Very high rates of poverty and unemployment
American Indians in Rural Areas
There was an accepted gender norm - Breadwinner, provides for family - Housework and Childcare - With the closure of the sawmills - Many men were left out of work - Many women entered the workforce to help support the family - So...this labor market shift threatened the existing gender order in Golden Valley
Labor Market Shift and Gender Roles in Golden Valley
- Strong social networks allow for migration with some reduced risk - Spatial concentration in "ethnic enclaves" -Mexicans →California, Texas -Cubans →Florida Dominicans and Puerto Ricans→New York City - Historical events and employment opportunities have contributed to the concentration of Latinos in the Southwest US - Mexican-American War - WWII Bracero program Farming and meat-packing - "Non-traditional" or "New Destination" migration trends have emerged (Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee) - Immigration reform and shifting border patrol strategies
Latinos in Rural Areas
