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As rural America turns down the path of a new century, the independent, self-reliant farmer and small business owner of the last century may be disappearing from the landscape. In many rural communities, it is the large national and multinational corporations that seem to have set the development agenda. Yet, one of the paradoxes of rural America is that some communities retain educated and skilled residents. The civil class, comprised of these small business stakeholders, still thrives in many rural localities, yielding beneficial consequences for the communities. The fundamental attribute of this civic class is its relative autonomy from wage labor and from forces that steer workers towards wage-maximizing behaviors such as out-migration. This civil class is rooted in constellations of local relationships and localized markets. Our hypothesis is that, when this group of local business persons and small farmers succeeds, it serves to benefit the community and buffers it from external, global forces. Specifically we: define the civil class, describe fully individual and household attributes of its members, and contrast it with the wage and salaried middle class. We geographically locate the prevalence of the civil class in detailed spatial terms. We then analyze temporal changes in retention of individuals in this class using multilevel models of community economic, social and cultural contexts hypothesized to promote this class sector. We conduct this analysis primarily with confidential internal Census data files that are sufficiently large and detailed to address adequately these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research evaluates the effect of family life course events on the probabilities that women will move from their communities and, if moving, how far they will move from their communities. Using internal Census micro-data files for migration & mobility between 1995 and 2000, we construct four mobility outcomes: 1) remaining in the same house, 2) making a local move within the local labor market, 3) leaving the labor market entirely. Controlling for other individual and family characteristics, we then use hierarchical linear models to estimate mobility probabilities for these outcomes associated with four family transitions; the birth of the oldest child, the oldest child entering primary school, the oldest child entering middle school, and the oldest child entering high school. Our results show the influence of community characteristics on mobility behavior associated with women's life course transitions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]