Penniless and Provincial: Political Socialization in Impoverished Rural Areas and Small Towns.

The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to compare the attitudes, skills and behaviors of youth in poor small towns to those in urban communities characterized by similar levels of poverty, and second, to gain a fuller understanding of the reasons that young people in small towns tend to have higher levels of political knowledge and are more likely to participate in their schools. Since most of the literature on poverty examines urban areas, it is instructive to examine other types of poor communities. Using survey data focused on small towns, along with national data that allow for comparisons across many different types of communities in the U.S., this paper will show that despite their poverty, young people in smaller towns and rural areas are more likely to develop a participatory and knowledgeable civic identity because of the the close-knit nature of the communities in which they grow up. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]