Declining Yet Resilient Small Towns: Impact of Population Change on Community Quality of Life 1994-2014

Small towns in the Midwest have experienced dramatic changes in social and economic conditions since the 1980s. In the Midwest, most small communities have experienced decline in terms of shrinking populations, exodus of... [ view full abstract ]

Small towns in the Midwest have experienced dramatic changes in social and economic conditions since the 1980s. In the Midwest, most small communities have experienced decline in terms of shrinking populations, exodus of younger people, job losses, and poorer community services. One theoretical explanation for these changes is the shift away from an industrial economy to a postindustrial one, which has impacted traditional rural sectors like agriculture and manufacturing particularly hard. However, some towns have managed to improve community quality of life despite declining populations. We call these places Resilient-Decline towns.  We operationalize decline and percent change in population between 1990 and 2010.  Resiliency is measured by improving in quality of life between 1994 and 2014, while vulnerability is indicated by worsening scores.  From these indicators we classify towns into declining, resilient-decline, thriving, and vulnerable growth categories for analysis.  The groups will be described in terms of the demographics, economics, social capital, civic engagement, and community perceptions.  Multinomial logistic regression will be employed to ascertain the key factors predicting membership in the four categories.  Data comes from the Iowa Small Towns Project that has surveyed residents in 99 Iowa small towns (between 500 and 10,000 people) since 1994.  Secondary data at the place-level is taken from Decennial and ACS data from the Census Bureau.