Abstract
This chapter evaluates how migration streams by age, educational attainment, household income, and labor force status shape population composition and community assets in rural natural-resource-dependent US counties. Rural areas (and especially those dependent on natural resources) have long experienced out-migration of young adults, more educated people, and higher income households with serious implications for community sustainability. However, amenity destination places represent a different kind of natural resource dependence with correspondingly distinct migration patterns that have become more common around the world. In contrast to farming and mining dependent counties, counties dependent on serving as an amenity destination experience in-migration and attract high-income households, highly educated individuals, and older adults. Yet, we find that even amenity destinations experience net out-migration of young adults, remarkable levels of population turnover, and little gain in the employed population. These conditions could jeopardize the efficacy of local institutions (especially schools), curtail economic development, increase community ambivalence, and strain community services. In sum, migration flows in amenity destinations increase local financial capital but yield mixed outcomes for human and social capitals, bringing potential for community capital accumulation but introducing challenges as well.
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Notes
- 1.
Please note that social capital is only one component of community well-being and cannot replace economic opportunities in promoting community and economic development. Furthermore, social capital is inherently neutral in that it can create either positive or negative impacts depending on one’s position and perspective (Coleman, 1988; Fukuyama, 2002; Portes, 1998; Dasgupta & Serageldin, 1999).
- 2.
Estimates of net migration for mining-dependent counties are derived from county-specific net migration estimates by age downloaded from ICPSR based on the work of Bowles and Tarver (1965); Bowles, Beale, and Lee (1975); White, Mueser, and Tierney (1987); Fuguitt and Beale (1993); and Voss et al. (2004).
- 3.
See proceedings of Understanding and Managing Amenity-led Migration in the Mountain Regions international conference held in Banff, Canada in May 2008.
- 4.
Nonmetropolitan counties (as of 2003 definitions) in the contiguous 48 states are included in this analysis for a total of 2,024 observations. Alaska and Hawaii are excluded because of their great distance from other US counties, their proclivity for generating outliers, and because the amenity destination measure is not available at this time.
- 5.
A county is coded as “destination” if its score exceeds one standard deviation from the mean for all nonmetropolitan counties and it does not have more than 4% of its population living in group quarters. So that categories are mutually exclusive, destination county status trumps all other types. The destination classification correlates with McGranahan’s (1999) natural amenity index at 0.32 and with Johnson and Beale’s nonmetropolitan recreation counties at 0.67.
- 6.
- 7.
It is important to note that labor force status is recorded at the end of the migration interval (Census, 2000) and indicates postmigration status.
- 8.
These data record household income in 1999, which is likely a postmigration measure for most households. While moving may impact household income, the affects of moving should not be drastic, because household income includes transfer payments from retirement and investments, as well as earned income.
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Winkler, R., Cheng, C., Golding, S. (2012). Boom or Bust? Population Dynamics in Natural Resource-Dependent Counties. In: Kulcsár, L., Curtis, K. (eds) International Handbook of Rural Demography. International Handbooks of Population, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1842-5_24
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