Files and links (1)
CC BY-NC-SA V4.0, Open Access
Dissertation
Rural-Non-Rural Differences in Youth Status Attainment
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2022
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004529
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/124623
Abstract
It is essential to explore how growing up in rural and non-rural areas impacts youth status attainment because of the critical social and economic changes in rural areas and the frequent rural-urban youth migration that influence youth life chances and wellbeing. With data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (NLSY 97), the dissertation adopts multilevel/mixed-effects models to examine the rural-non-rural differences in youth status attainment processes and outcomes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The results show significant rural-non-rural differences in multiple educational outcomes and hourly wages at age 30 or 31. The dissertation also explores the mechanisms through which rural origins influence youth status attainment processes and outcomes. First, it clarifies rural socioeconomic disadvantage and social capital advantage narratives at both individual and aggregate levels. The findings show that the rural disadvantage in community characteristics plays a more important role in shaping the educational gaps across places than individual-level disadvantages. Second, the dissertation examines how migration influences youth educational attainment. The findings clarify the relationship between migration and education by showing that the higher educational levels of rural migrants are not just because talented youth are more likely to move than others, but because moving results in better education, regardless of prior academic potential. The direct effect of migration suggests that rural youth were disadvantaged by the limited educational resources in rural places. At the same time, migrants to rural areas also had better educational outcomes than stayers, which may be because their moving increases student-college match. Finally, the dissertation examines how migration and return migration influence youth hourly wages at age 30 or 31. The results show that for rural youth, leaving was associated with higher wages, while returning with higher educational levels did not lead to higher wages than staying. Youth who moved to non-metro/rural areas also experience a “migration loss” in wages compared with rural stayers, which may be due to the less diverse wage structure in rural labor markets and migrants’ disadvantages in social capital.
Metrics
3 File views/ downloads
25 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Rural-Non-Rural Differences in Youth Status Attainment
- Creators
- Xiao Li
- Contributors
- Alair MacLean (Advisor)Monica K Johnson (Committee Member)Jennifer Sherman (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Sociology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 238
- Identifiers
- 99900882927201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation