Youth Inequality, Poverty, and Opporuntity in Rural and Urban American is a Russell Sage Foundation-funded ethnographic, book-length study on the perspectives that youth hold about inequality, mobility, opportunity as well as the role that they believe that their government should play in addressing these challenges. The work seeks to understand how youth from different racial and class categories in urban and rural contexts understand their poverty and life chances amidst the current political climate. High school-aged youth are at critical juncture in their civic and political development, as many of them move into their roles as voters. The ideas and perspectives that these youth hold will ultimately shape our nation’s future.
Despite a wealth of research on inequality in the United States, we know little about youth perspectives about inequality, mobility, and opportunity and what they think the government should do about these issues in America today.
To gain a broad understanding of youth perspectives, I will conduct ethnographic research at three locations in Pennsylvania—a swing state that played a crucial role in the 2016 presidential election. These sites were selected because they have different politics and demographics:
1. A large town of 20,000 residents located in Pennsylvania’s rural heartland where nearly 70% of residents voted for the Republican candidate in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election.
2. A small rural town of 1,000 residents located in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains where more than 80% of residents voted for the Republican candidate in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election.
3. One of the largest and most racially diverse cities in the state where nearly 80% of residents voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election.
Within each site, I will conduct ethnographic fieldwork—including classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and student surveys—in several public high schools. The fieldwork is structured to answer the following questions:
How does inequality and poverty affect youth and their families in these three counties?
How do youth from different racial and class groups in urban and rural contexts understand their poverty and life chances given the current political climate?
What role do rural and urban youth think their government should play in alleviating inequality in their lives and communities?
This multi-year ethnographic project is among the first studies to consider the perspectives that rural and urban youth from diverse racial and class backgrounds hold about inequality, mobility, and opportunity and to ask them what they think their government should do to alleviate these challenges. It takes seriously the voices of these youth as future voters and the power that they will soon have to shape our democracy. Using data from participant observations, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and surveys in these communities and their public schools, the study will showcase both the differences and the often-overlooked similarities that rural and urban youth have about the ways that inequality affects their lives and communities, about how they understand their life chances in this current political climate, and about what they believe the government should to address inequality today.