Learning About Politics in Low-Income Communities

• Author: J. Celeste Lay
• Published date: 01 May 2006
• Date: 01 May 2006
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X05278039
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research
Volume 34 Number 3
10.1177/1532673X05278039
American Politics Research
Lay / Poverty and Political Knowledge
May 2006 319-340
© 2005 Sage Publications
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Communities
Poverty and Political Knowledge
J. Celeste Lay
Tulane University
Many take for granted that children living in impoverished communities are
disadvantaged on several social outcomes, including civic knowledge, because
of their poverty and the circumstances that go along with this condition. How-
ever, most analyses of poor communities are conducted only in urban neigh-
borhoods. In this article, the author examines the paradox of small-town life:
On one hand, many rural areas and small towns are just as or even more impov-
erished than many urban neighborhoods; on the other hand, these same com-
munities are praised as the most civically minded and politically knowledge-
able places within the United States. How can two similarly poor community
types produce such different outcomes? The author shows that the best expla-
nation for these differences is the social interaction that characterizes small
towns and rural areas. Political discussion within smaller towns is beneficial
for adolescents’levels of political knowledge, whereas this discussion in urban
areas is associated with lower levels of knowledge.
Keywords:
political knowledge; political engagement; civic engagement;
political socialization; neighborhood effects; contextual effects; poverty
RuralpovertyhasbeenandcontinuestobeawayoflifeformanyAmeri-
cans. In 2000, the metropolitan poverty rate stood at 10.8%, whereas the
rural poverty rate was 13.4%. In spite of the higher rate in small towns, most
social science research focuses on impoverished urban areas. Growing up in
poor, urban neighborhoods is detrimental for school achievement, health and
Author’s Note: I would like to thank James Gimpel for the use of the data analyzed in this article
and for reviewing previous drafts, as well as Karen Kaufmann, Peter Burns, Clarence Stone, and
several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was supported in part by
a dissertation grant from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engage-
ment and was originally presented at the 2002 Midwest Political Science Association meeting.
319

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American Politics Research
well-being, socioemotional functioning, and civic engagement and political
knowledge. In contrast, and in spite of their poverty, small towns and rural
areas are often described as bastions of American civic life. Why would these
two impoverished environments have such different patterns of civic engage-
ment and different levels of political knowledge?
I argue that these divergent patterns are due at least in part to the influence
of social networks and positive social interactions in smaller towns. Informal
networks that facilitate social development are often lacking in modern
urban neighborhoods (Sampson, 1992; Wilson, 1987, 1996), but these types
of relationships are more common in smaller towns and rural areas. Individu-
als are more knowledgeable and participatory in communities where they
know and trust one another (Putnam, 2000). Here, I explore the differences in
political knowledge among adolescents in smaller compared with more
urban communities.
Impoverished Communities and
Social Outcomes
The scholarship on the negative effects of poverty on many social out-
comes is almost entirely based on urban neighborhoods, stimulated in part by
Wilson’s (1987, 1996) work on the “urban underclass.” The urban focus is
also largely practical; indeed, one look at a sampling of indicators of social
and economic status confirms that life in certain parts of cities is abysmal.
Even so, children in urban America are not alone in their deprivation. The
nonmetropolitan poverty rate has exceeded the metropolitan poverty rate
since these rates were officially measured in the 1960s (U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2004). In 2000, the average urban
resident made over $12,000 more per year than the average rural resident.
These differences are due in part to the wider income distributions in urban
than rural areas. Poverty is more common and widespread in rural areas. And
although the average cost of living is lower in rural than urban areas (Nord,
2000), rural residents often have higher costs for transportation and medical
care (Rogers, 1988). Rural areas and smaller towns suffer from many of the
same problems that poor, urban neighborhoods face: high levels of unem-
ployment, low levels of educational attainment, geographic isolation, and the
intergenerational transmission of poverty.
Given these similarities between small towns and urban communities, one
might expect similar social outcomes. In some cases, this would be right.
Rural schoolchildren score much lower on standardized tests and are more
likely to drop out of school than those in the suburbs or urban areas

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Lay / Poverty and Political Knowledge
321
(Roscigno & Crowley, 2001). Single parenthood is on the rise in smaller
communities (Lichter & Eggebeen, 1992), especially among those in pov-
erty. In fact, in 1995, the proportion of single-parent families below the pov-
erty rate within rural America was essentially the same as that in urban
areas (32.8% compared with 32.2%; see “Poverty and Well-Being,” 1999).
Furthermore, with the losses in the agricultural and industrial sectors that
once typified the rural labor force, jobs in the low-paying service sector have
been unable to replace the wages and benefits to which many were accus-
tomed. Even so, many scholars extol the virtues of small-town civic life,
while they bemoan the lack of civic mindedness in poor urban neighbor-
hoods. Why would similarly impoverished environments produce such dif-
ferent patterns of engagement?
Although many smaller towns and rural areas have the same problems that
poor, urban neighborhoods face, one of the major differences is the types of
interactions that take place and the relationships that form within these com-
munities. Social interaction is the mechanism that translates community
characteristics into particular behavioral outcomes (Huckfeldt & Sprague,
1995). Two theories describe, generally, how the level of poverty influences
social interaction within a community.
Theories of collective socialization and contagion describe how the afflu-
ence of a community can affect a variety of social outcomes. Collective so-
cialization theories suggest that because adults in more well-off commu-
nities are more highly educated, steadily employed, and more participatory
in civic life than adults in poor communities, they bestow benefits on all
young people within the communities (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, &
Sealand, 1993; Jencks & Mayer, 1990; Wilson, 1987). Contagion theories
describe how behaviors, both good and bad, spread through peer interaction.
They assume that if children grow up in communities where their peers drop
out of school, for example, they will be more likely to drop out; and likewise,
if all their peers go to college, they are more likely to go to college (Crane,
1991; Granovetter, 1978; Schelling, 1978).
Even though these theories were mostly developed with poor, urban com-
munities in mind, they still indicate that the types of adult-child and child-
child interactions within a community have important influences on the
socialization of young people. This interaction is mediated in part by the
level of affluence or poverty within the community. Individuals, including
young people, are a part of particular local contexts; these contexts structure
interaction patterns through which people receive information about a wide
range of activities. This community context creates a particular culture, or
bias, that is transmitted from generation to generation through interaction in
the community.

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Although the economic standing of a community is undoubtedly a com-
ponent of this culture, we should not expect the experience of poverty or
affluence to be uniform across different environments with varying biases
and contexts. Impoverished urban communities are often characterized as
environments of social disorganization (Sampson, 1992; Wilson, 1987) and
places where the “community structure is unable to realize the common val-
ues of its residents and maintain effective social controls” (Sampson, 2001,
p. 8). The characteristics of many poor, urban neighborhoods, and thus the
social interactions within them, often do not facilitate the kind of environ-
ment in which individuals can come together to achieve common goals. The
networks and interactions within smaller communities, however, are charac-
teized quite differently.
Social Interaction in Rural America
Poverty within small towns is “geographically concentrated in the same
way that urban poverty is confined by neighborhoods; and rural children in
poverty face the same challenges as poor urban children—substance abuse,
teen pregnancy, and educational failure” (Nadel & Sagawa, 2002, p. 12). It is
often assumed that urban communities are the only places that suffer from a
lack of adequate institutions, such as good schools, community centers, and
health clinics. However, these facilities are often just as lacking in rural com-
munities, which also lack the money to hire and maintain the best teachers, to
pay for new textbooks and equipment for school...