Research on economic restructuring generally emphasizes change, rather than continuity, in the socioeconomic landscape. That expectation is addressed here by comparing 1970 and 1990 in terms of the gender division of labor for U.S. counties. These years represent poles of the...

Many researchers advocate active local government responses to poverty and other economic disparities. In doing so, they raise a generally unexplored question: can local governments themselves influence poverty net of other determinants? This study extends past research in two ways by (1)...

Prison construction experienced explosive growth over the 1980s and 1990s. Many poor rural communities invited prisons into their environs, anticipating jobs and economic development. However, with one notable exception, no ex post empirical studies exist of the economic effects of prison...

Two opposing views of service-led development contend, on the one hand, that services can be a propulsive force in rural economic development and, on the other, that services are neither independent of, nor a replacement for, older forms of rural industrialization such as agriculture, mining,...