This article highlights the new racial and ethnic diversity in rural America, which may be the most important but least anticipated population shift in recent demographic history. Ethnoracial change is central to virtually every aspect of rural America over the foreseeable future: agro-food systems, community life, labor force change, economic development, schools and schooling, demographic change, intergroup relations, and politics. The goal here is to plainly illustrate how America's racial and ethnic transformation has emerged as an important dimension of ongoing U.S. urbanization and urbanism, growing cultural and economic heterogeneity, and a putative "decline in community" in rural America. Rural communities provide a natural laboratory for better understanding the implications of uneven settlement and racial diversity, acculturation, and economic and political incorporation among Hispanic newcomers. This article raises the prospect of a new racial balkanization and outlines key impediments to full incorporation of Hispanics into rural and small town community life. Immigration and the new ethnoracial diversity will be at the leading edge of major changes in rural community life as the nation moves toward becoming a majority-minority society by 2042.

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Immigration and the New Racial Diversity in Rural America

Marital delay, relationship dissolution and churning, and high divorce rates have extended the amount of time individuals in search of romantic relationships spend outside of marital unions. The scope of research on intimate partnering now includes studies of “hooking up,” Internet dating, visiting relationships, cohabitation, marriage following childbirth, and serial partnering, as well as more traditional research on transitions into marriage. Collectively, we know much more about relationship formation and development, but research often remains balkanized among scholars employing different theoretical approaches, methodologies, or disciplinary perspectives. The study of relationship behavior is also segmented into particular life stages, with little attention given to linkages between stages over the life course. Recommendations for future research are offered.

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Partnering across the Life Course: Sex, Relationships, and Mate Selection

New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States

The landscape of union formation has been shifting; Americans are now marrying at the highest ages on record and the majority of young adults have cohabited. Yet little attention has been paid to the timing of cohabitation relative to marriage. Using the National Survey of Families and Households and 4 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examined the timing of marriage, cohabitation, and unions over 20 years. As the median age at first marriage has climbed, the age at cohabitation has remained stable for men and women. The changes in the timing of union formation have been similar according to race/ethnicity. The marked delay in marriage among women and men with low educational attainment has resulted in a near-convergence in the age at first marriage according to education. The authors conclude that the rise in cohabitation has offset changes in the levels and timing of marriage.

Two Decades of Stability and Change in Age at First Union Formation

The authors review demographic trends and research on families in the United States, with a special focus on the past decade. They consider the following several topics: (a) marriage and remarriage, (b) divorce, (c) cohabitation, (d) fertility, (e) same-gender unions, (f) immigrant families, and (g) children's living arrangements. Throughout, the authors review both overall trends and patterns as well as those by social class and race-ethnicity. The authors discuss major strands of recent research, emphasizing emerging themes and promising directions. They close with a summary of central patterns and trends and conclude that recent trends are not as uniform as they tended to be in earlier decades, making the description of family change increasingly complex.

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The Demography of Families: A Review of Patterns and Change.

National estimates of the rise in serial cohabitation

Cohabitation, post-conception unions, and the rise in nonmarital fertility.

This paper evaluates comparative patterns of fertility in new Hispanic destinations and established gateways using pooled cross-sectional data from the 2005-2009 microdata files of the American Community Survey. Changing Hispanic fertility provides a useful indicator of cultural incorporation. Analyses show that high fertility among Hispanics has been driven in part by the Mexican origin and other new immigrant populations ( e.g., non-citizens, those with poor English language skills, etc.). However, high fertility rates among Hispanics cannot be explained entirely by sociodemographical characteristics that place them at higher risk of fertility. For 2005-2009, Hispanic fertility rates were 48 percent higher than fertility among whites; they were roughly 25 percent higher after accounting for differences in key social characteristics, such as age, nativity, country of origin, and education. Contrary to most previous findings of spatial assimilation among in-migrants, fertility rates among Hispanics in new destinations exceeded fertility in established gateways by 18 percent. In the multivariate analyses, Hispanics in new destinations were roughly 10 percent more likely to have had a child in the past year than those living in established gateways. Results are consistent with subcultural explanations of Hispanic fertility and raise new questions about the spatial patterning of assimilation and the formation of ethnic enclaves outside traditional settlement areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Hispanic Assimilation and Fertility in New U.S. Destinations

Since the 1990s, many rural communities in the Southern US have experienced an unprecedented influx of Latino migrants. Some research undertaken on such “new Hispanic destinations” suggests that the newcomers tend to assume low-status jobs shunned by non-Hispanic residents and thus form a segmented labor market, but other work indicates that they heavily compete with natives (particularly African Americans) for less-skilled positions. Drawing on data from the 2000 census and 2009–2011 American Community Survey, this paper examines patterns of occupational stratification between Latino, white, and black men in the rural South to identify whether Hispanic economic relations in the area are better characterized by segmentation or competition. Specifically, occupational dissimilarity indexes and status scores are calculated to map the groups’ relative economic positions in the rural portions of five Southeastern states home to fast-growing nonmetro Latino populations: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Consistent with the segmentation hypothesis, the results reveal that Latinos are highly occupationally dissimilar from non-Hispanic whites and blacks and rank significantly below both in mean occupational status. Standardization of the stratification measures shows that Hispanics’ labor market isolation and disadvantage can be substantially accounted for by their lower average levels of human capital and US citizenship.

Occupational Stratification of Hispanics, Whites, and Blacks in Southern Rural Destinations: A Quantitative Analysis

This paper examines the unique features of political capitals and how those features impact capital city growth. The hypothesis of this paper is that greater spending by governments should increase the income of capital city residents relative to residents in the rest of the government’s jurisdiction. This hypothesis is tested with panel data from US state capital metropolitan areas. There is found to be a statistically significant relationship between state expenditure and income in the capital, holding income in the rest of the state constant, consistent with the hypothesis. Policy implications and avenues for future research are discussed in the conclusion.

Richard N. Turner

Papers

National estimates of the rise in serial cohabitation

Cohabitation, post-conception unions, and the rise in nonmarital fertility.

Hispanic Assimilation and Fertility in New U.S. Destinations

Occupational Stratification of Hispanics, Whites, and Blacks in Southern Rural Destinations: A Quantitative Analysis

Capital cities: a special case in urban development