Safeguarding the Heartland: County Decisions to Maintain Rural Communities in Three Midwestern States
Lori Weibold Lippisch
Department of Sociology, University of Kansas
This study examines local government decisions in three rural states in response to the forces of globalization such as the loss of jobs and the outward migration of their young, educated population, at the same time dealing with an increasingly aged population in need of health care. Data (document analysis and intensive interviews) will be collected to assess local spending decisions and their meanings. Important questions include: Do health care and economic development compete for the same finite resources? How do local officials see the survival of rural America , generally and their communities in particular? What are the forces, situations and meanings that underlie their decisions and what are the consequences for rural communities and people? Such questions are absent in the literature.
We know that rural areas in the United States are losing population and losing jobs, but how are county officials dealing with these losses? At the same time, access to medical care is continually threatened in rural America . How do county officials cope with these competing demands? And as the federal government assigns more and more health care funding to the states, are states passing those costs down to counties? Are counties responding to the loss of and aging populations coupled with loss in jobs with a greater commitment to sparking the market with expenditures towards development? While this study will not answer fully all the relevant questions, it will certainly provide knowledge on where county monies are going and, in effect, where county priorities lie as well as how county commissioners make sense of the dilemmas facing county government and communities in three Midwestern states in America.
