Rural Families
You are in the Rural Families section of the Casey Foundation Knowledge Center, which offers resources that are either published or funded by the Casey Foundation. Resources include data on families living in rural areas and strategies to promote their economic success.
Featured Publications
15. Pathways to Juvenile Justice Reform: Detention Reform in Rural Areas
2008
This report details a variety of special techniques, tactics, and strategies that can help rural areas accomplish detention reform effectively. The report highlights the importance in focusing on rural detention reform; five principles to guide detention reform in rural areas; unique characteristics of rural communities and rural youth; the particular issues that may make rural detention reform more difficult; profiles of two promising rural detention reform efforts (in Illinois and Oregon); lessons learned from implementing detention reform effectively in rural areas and ways in which rural counties can boost their detention reform efforts; and a summary of key lessons, paying special attention to the critical role of leadership in detention reform efforts in rural regions.
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View the Pathways to Juvenile Detention Reform Series >>
Helping Rural Families Build Economic Success: Earn It, Keep It, Grow It
2009
This discussion paper for small foundations highlights the Casey Foundation’s Earn it, Keep it, Grow it framework and provides suggestions for the ways other funders can invest in rural families. Also included are questions for discussion and a list of additional questions.
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View the Investing Strategies to Serve Vulnerable Children Series >>
Diversifying the Economy to Create Jobs and Help Families Prosper in South Dakota
2008
Facing the common rural challenges of outmigration and a dying agricultural-based economy, the residents of Howard, South Dakota and the surrounding county looked to the economic engines of the future to create employment opportunities and increase income. From developing wind energy-related businesses to organic beef production, Miner County has re-energized its citizens, revitalized its economy, and recaptured some former community members.
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View the Rural Stories Series >>
Carsey Institute: Concentrated Rural Poverty and the Geography of Exclusion, Fall 2008
2008
This brief highlights the challenges faced by America’s rural poor, in light of their physical and social isolation from middle-class communities that might offer economic opportunities. The brief is one in a series of Reports on Rural America from the Carsey Institute that are funded by the Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
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Expanding College and Job-Skills Opportunities in Western Maine
2008
In Franklin County, Maine, a group of local leaders has brought community college classes and jobs skills training to their area, giving residents new opportunities to qualify for good jobs and higher expectations for their futures. It is also providing employers—and prospective employers—with a new supply of well-educated workers.
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View the Rural Stories Series >>
Working Hard for the Money: Trends in Women’s Employment: 1970 to 2007
2008
This report, which spans nearly 40 years of women's employment trends, finds that as men's employment rates have dropped over the past four decades, more rural women are working to keep the lights on at home. The Carsey Institute report is the first major study of women's employment trends to tease out differences between rural and urban women's work.
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