Socially And Economically Distressed Areas

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

As previously mentioned, Central Appalachia has been one of the most socially and economically distressed areas of the country. The Central Appalachian Institute for Research and Development (CAIRD) has been created as a non-profit public policy organization designed to provide long-term educational and developmental strategies in order to establish sustainable and vibrant communities that will improve the quality of life for citizens of Central Appalachia. Located in Eastern Kentucky, an area where 40 of the 50 distressed counties are situated, CAIRD will identify and address the complex, systemic social and economic problems that persist in the region. This will be accomplished by creating opportunities for scholarly research and development, including establishing a network for collaborative research between postsecondary institutions in Central Appalachia. Other objectives encompass building relationships with state and local governments, federal agencies, and non-profits in order to impact public policy decisions. CAIRD will also promote economic growth and foster initiatives for community outreach and education.

Historical Concepts

The concept of a Research and Development Institute for Central Appalachia (CAIRD) has been discussed in the region for nearly fifty years. Governor Bert T. Combs endorsed the idea of a regional think tank in 1960 and the President’s Appalachian Regional Commission (PARC) in 1964 called for an Appalachian Development Institute. President Kennedy endorsed such an effort in his meeting with the Council of Appalachian Governors in 1963.

In 1994, the report of the Governor’s Kentucky Appalachian Task Force, Communities of Hope, recommended the establishment of a "Kentucky Appalachian Development Institute as a semi-autonomous body with an ongoing agenda to hold hearings, conduct seminars, sponsor policy studies and render advice through the Department for Local Government (or other such office) to the Governor regarding development strategies for Appalachia." The institute was once again recommended by the Kentucky Appalachian Commission during the latter stages of Governor Paul Patton’s Administration, but was never implemented. Lack of funding was the stated reason.

The Central Appalachian Institute for Research and Development (CAIRD) is designed to lay the intellectual and conceptual framework for the development, funding and implementation of such an institute to succeed and truly make a difference.

Previous Models

The logic behind CAIRD is not unprecedented. Institutes throughout the country have focused on regional development for decades. Many institutes specialize in the causes of rural and urban poverty, as well as similarities and correlates that exist between the two. "Appalachian Centers," located at colleges and universities throughout the region, study and preserve the history of the Appalachian region, while working to address many of the social and economic conditions that have persisted for generations. While there is no perfect model for an institute such as CAIRD, understanding similar organizations will be important to enable CAIRD to best understand how to address the complex, systemic problems that persist in Appalachia (all models have been condensed into a table for quick reference – See Appendix A).

The following research centers offer some reference points for CAIRD because of their focus, goals, objectives and functions. Datasheets were made for the collection of information from several research centers throughout Central Appalachia. Compiling this information allowed the author to better understand the needs and gaps regarding research being conducted in the region and how CAIRD might fill these gaps.

Appalachian State University

(1) Research Institute for Environment, Energy, and Economics (RIEEE) - http://rieee.appstate.edu/

The goal of the RIEEE is to facilitate the highest quality research and application in the areas of environment, energy and economics.  The Institute will assist faculty, students, academic departments, related centers and other university units through financial administration for research projects, funding development, logistics, and promotion and dissemination of research results.  

Facilitate collaborative efforts to support research across departmental and collegial structures.

Facilitate extramural funding for faculty and student research as well as to support future research facilities and equipment.

Provide a point of contact for outside agencies to inquire about research associated with the environment, energy and economics.

Disseminate knowledge and information from research initiatives associated with the environment, energy and economics.

Assist Appalachian State University in efforts to improve energy efficiency and to utilize renewable energy technologies.

Support community and regional outreach and education initiatives related to the environmental, energy and economics.

(2) Southern Appalachian Environmental Research and Education Center (SAEREC) - http://saerec.appstate.edu/

SAEREC membership is made up of an affiliation of researchers at Appalachian State University and their collaborators along with outreach specialists within the RIEEE. SAEREC addresses a broad range of research issues concerned with environmental issues facing the Southern Appalachian Mountains, ranging from biodiversity and conservation, ecological restoration, air quality, land use change, and regional climate change impacts. Research is initiated by individual researchers, and involves both faculty, graduate and undergraduate students. Collaborations with faculty at other institutions are encouraged, as well as with government institutions. For example, we currently have adjunct faculty affiliated with SAEREC from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Asheville. In addition, there are collaborations with researchers at NASA, NOAA, the EPA and Boyce Thompson Research Institute involving the study of various environmental aerosols and ozone on air quality. In addition, research involving biological conservation of endangered mussels in southeastern stream systems and the impacts of invasive plants on the landscape are also being researched by SAEREC members.

(3) Center for Economic Research and Policy Analysis (CERPA) - http://cerpa.appstate.edu/

The Center for Economic Research and Policy Analysis (CERPA) is a multidisciplinary unit at Appalachian State University. The mission of CERPA is to improve policy and decision making by producing rigorous research and disseminating relevant information on current economic and policy issues. To that end, CERPA maintains research programs in the specific areas environment and energy, experimental economics, survey research, and economic development.

Wichita State University

(1) Center for Economic Development and Business Research - http://www.cedbr.org/

Overview

The mission of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research (CEDBR) is to enhance the region's economic growth and development by:

collecting, analyzing and disseminating business, economic and demographic information

conducting applied business, economic and demographic research

serving as a vital link between the business and economic development community, Wichita State University and the W. Frank Barton School of Business.

The CEDBR strives to be recognized by the business and economic development community as:

a reliable and responsive source for business, economic and demographic information, and as an

essential partner in the region's economic development process by conducting high-quality, objective research on issues related to the community's current and future economic well-being.

East Stroudsburg University

(1) Center for Research and Economic Development (CFRED) - http://www4.esu.edu/red/cfred/

Overview

The East Stroudsburg University Center for Research and Economic Development (CFRED) is a private not for profit corporation created to benefit East Stroudsburg University in the areas of economic development, entrepreneurial innovation, research, and workforce training. Since 2002, the University and CFRED have established an affiliation, supported by an annual Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which stipulates that CFRED will support the university and its programs. The MOU details the two organizations' mutual goals and objectives, as well as the operational arrangements agreed upon to accomplish such goals.

(2) The ESU Center for Research and Economic Development initiatives:

University Research and Business Park

Pocono Mountains Keystone Innovation Zone

Mission

The mission of the The Center for Research and Economic Development, Inc. is to create regional wealth through entrepreneurial initiatives, research, and workforce training.

Purpose

The Center for Research and Economic Development, incorporated on March 30, 1999, is a private, nonprofit, 501(c) 3 created to benefit East Stroudsburg University. The Center is the principal economic development and research extension of the University focusing on entrepreneurial innovation, applied research, and workforce training.

The Center provides a multidisciplinary team of university faculty, staff and students, in addition to outside experts and consultants to address the research and economic development goals and objectives of local, regional, national and international corporations, businesses, industries, organizations, governmental and educational partners.

Programs

(3) University Research and Business Park

The continued growth of the University's Business Accelerator Program led to the opportunity to develop a 15-acre University Research and Business Park on the ESU campus along Route 447 in Smithfield Township. The project includes the construction of a 51,000 sq. ft. Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship that includes ESU's Research and Economic Development Division, Business Accelerator Program, Wet Lab Facilities, Entrepreneurial Leadership Center, ESU's Northeast Wildlife DNA Laboratory and Computer Training Labs. The economic impact of the project is expected to result in over 595 new jobs and $57M infused into the regional economy. Phase I of the Park is funded in part by a $2.5M Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; $1.2M Economic Development Administration; $75,000 from the Appalachian Regional Commission; and $1M Local Share Account Gaming â€" Monroe County. Project partners included the Redevelopment Authority of the County of Monroe and the Pocono Mountains Economic Development Corporation.

(4) Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Project

Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship ($11.25M, 51,000 sq. ft.)

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is Phase I of the ESU Research and Business Park being developed on 15-acres of property owned by East Stroudsburg University in Smithfield Township. The building is located on the corner of Brown Street and Route 447 in Smithfield Township.

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship includes:

ESU Business Accelerator

Wet Labs for life sciences companies

ESU Northeast Infectious Disease Diagnostic Lab

ESU Entrepreneurial Leadership Center

ESU Division of Research and Economic Development

Computer Training Labs and Conference Rooms 

The economic impact of Phase I, the construction of a 51,000 sq. ft. Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as prepared by the Northeast Pennsylvania Alliance (NEPA) using its IMPLAN model, is expected to result in:

595 jobs; and $57M into the Monroe County economy

630 jobs and $59.4M in northeastern Pennsylvania; and 

741 jobs and $85.7M in Pennsylvania 

Highlander Research and Education Center –

http://www.highlandercenter.org

Mission

Highlander serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South. We work with people fighting for justice, equality and sustainability, supporting their efforts to take collective action to shape their own destiny. Through popular education, participatory research, and cultural work, we help create spaces -- at Highlander and in local communities -- where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. We develop leadership and help create and support strong, democratic organizations that work for justice, equality and sustainability in their own communities and that join with others to build broad movements for social, economic and restorative environmental change.

The founding principle and guiding philosophy of Highlander is that the answers to the problems facing society lie in the experiences of ordinary people. Those experiences, so often belittled and denigrated in our society, are the keys to grassroots power.

Today, that philosophy is reflected in the educational programs and services offered by the 21st-century Highlander Center. Highlander serves Appalachia and the South with programs designed to build strong and successful social-change activism and community organizing led by the people who suffer most from the injustices of society. Highlander helps activists to become more effective community educators and organizers, informed about the important issues driving conditions in communities today.

We accomplish our purposes in a variety of ways.

Residential workshops and educational training sessions at our center in New Market, Tennessee, bring together representatives of communities facing specific struggles throughout the region.

Our library and audiovisual resource center are available to individuals and groups wanting information about Highlander's history or about current social change issues and strategies.

Through our participatory research and cultural program, we affirm and document the knowledge, concerns, and struggles of the people with whom we work.

Highlander staff members also develop and conduct workshops across the region, link communities grappling with common issues, and provide other education assistance in the field.

Finally, through its youth, internship and other programs, Highlander develops leadership within communities so that those who participate go on to share with others and to multiply what they have learned.

Programs

The Highlander Center works with grassroots leaders on a wide variety of social concerns, including:

Civil and Human Rights

Humane Immigration Policy

Criminal Justice Reform

Economic Justice and Workers' Rights

International Peace and Solidarity

Environmental Justice

Youth Leadership

Racial, Gender, and Sexual Discrimination

In support of our vision of justice, Highlander conducts research, develops organizing and educational strategies, collects and produces resource materials for popular educators and organizers, and sponsors popular education programs that support grassroots activists and community leaders in the South.

Highlander's programs are unified by the common theme of "Constructing Democracy," building a society in which all people can participate equally in the decisions that affect their lives. Our tactics for achieving this goal include:

Creating democratic space: providing an environment within which individuals can bring their whole selves and build authentic relationships with other people across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc. so that they can participate meaningfully in efforts to achieve social and economic justice.

Base-building: helping to create and support democratically governed grassroots organizations capable of addressing the problems facing their communities and of joining with other groups in a broad-based collaborative movement for social and economic change.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) - http://www.irp.wisc.edu/

Overview

The Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) is a university-based center for research into the causes and consequences of poverty and social inequality in the United States. It is nonprofit and nonpartisan.

The Institute was established in 1966 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, the organization given responsibility for reducing poverty in America. In the years since then, the Institute's affiliates, who represent a variety of disciplines, have formulated and tested basic theories of poverty and inequality, developed and evaluated social policy alternatives, and analyzed trends in poverty and economic well-being.

Most affiliates of the Institute hold regular teaching appointments at the university and divide their time between teaching and research. Some Institute affiliates are faculty members at other institutions who visit the Institute regularly to consult with colleagues and to present seminars. The Institute also hosts visiting scholars who, on leave from their permanent affiliation, come to IRP to conduct poverty-related research.

The principal activities of the Institute are sponsorship of the original research of its members, dissemination of their findings, and training and mentoring of future poverty researchers. Seminars, workshops, conferences, a publications program that includes print and electronic dissemination, and a challenging graduate student research training program are designed to achieve those ends.

As a university-based research institution, the Institute operates under University of Wisconsin regulations in receiving grants and disbursing funds. Grants are administered by Institute support staff. Appointments of the director and members of the Executive Committee are made by the University's College of Letters and Science. Within this framework the Institute is allowed substantial latitude in building a staff and research program.

IRP is one of three Area Poverty Research Centers sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The other two area centers are the University of Kentucky Poverty Research Center and the West Coast Poverty Research Center (WP/PRC), a new collaborative venture linking the School of Social Work and the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington with the university's departments of Economics, Sociology, and Geography. The WP/PRC will also collaborate with the Public Policy Institute of California in dissemination and other activities. ASPE also sponsors a National Poverty Center, located in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

IRP Initiatives

IRP RIDGE Center

In January 2010, the Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program (FANRP) of USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) named IRP the RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research following a nationwide competition. As the new RIDGE (Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics) Center, IRP will serve as a national hub for sponsoring new, innovative research related to such programs as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps); Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); the National School Lunch Program; and the School Breakfast Program; and as a center for training and mentoring scholars.

ERS also established a second research hub, the RIDGE Center for Targeted Food and Nutrition Assistance Research, at the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC), Mississippi State University (MSU), as part of this restructuring and consolidation of the former RIDGE Program, which was administered by five institutions, including IRP, from 1999–2009. The SRDC center will support food and nutrition assistance research directed at specific populations, including rural residents, Native Americans, and immigrants.

By establishing the RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research, IRP continues its long tradition of conducting policy-relevant research, training and mentoring the next generation of poverty scholars, and broadly disseminating its findings, with a renewed emphasis on food assistance research.

Outreach

WELPAN

The Midwest Welfare Peer Assistance Network (WELPAN) is a network of senior welfare officials from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The group, which is coordinated by IRP and funded by the Joyce Foundation, has met regularly since the fall of 1996 to share ideas and compare notes on what it takes to make welfare reform work.

Family Impact Seminars

The Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars aims to strengthen connections between research and state policymaking through an ongoing series of seminars, briefing reports, and follow-up activities aimed at bringing a family focus to policymaking.

Poverty Dispatches

IRP compiles and distributes Poverty Dispatches, links to Web-based news items dealing with poverty, welfare reform, and related topics twice a week. Each Dispatch lists links to current news in popular print media. Persons wishing to receive Poverty Dispatches by e-mail should send a request to [email protected].

Poverty Studies Announcements

The Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) distributes this compilation of poverty-related opportunities as a service to the larger poverty research and policy community; it is not intended to serve as a comprehensive resource, nor does inclusion imply endorsement.

Training and Education

IRP Graduate Research Fellows Program

The IRP Graduate Research Fellows Program is a training seminar conducted for Ph.D. students in the Departments of Economics, Social Work, Sociology, Political Science, and related disciplines who receive financial support through IRP or who expect to receive such support in the future. Students meet with graduate student peers and a faculty director, attend research presentations and/or conferences, and present their own work in a seminar or conference setting.

Poverty-Related Courses at the UW

This section contains poverty-related courses being offered at the UW-Madison, with links to course pages, instructor bios, and UW timetable course listings.

Poverty-Related Doctorates

This section contains a list of poverty-related doctorates from 1971 to present.

Research

Poverty Measurement: Introduction

Federal Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) | Regional, State, and Local Initiatives | History

In March 2010, the federal government released information on a proposed Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to offer a more complete picture of the depth and demographics of poverty, as well as the effects of public investments such as food assistance and tax credits on poverty rates. The SPM will not replace the current measure, but rather it will provide a different view of poverty and effectiveness of public antipoverty policies. The SPM is a work in progress, to be informed by the research and evaluation of poverty scholars.

In addition to federal efforts to revise the national measure, many states and localities have expressed interest in developing more meaningful poverty measures for their own area. New York City’s Center for Economic Opportunity, the State of New York, and IRP (for the State of Wisconsin and local areas) have also developed place-specific measures, based on work from federal researchers, to capture the impact of antipoverty programs and better reflect the costs of living in different locations.

The first official U.S. poverty measure was developed in the mid-1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson launched the "War on Poverty," with the understanding that poverty must be assessed and quantified if it is to be reduced. IRP was also established at that time, charged with conducting interdisciplinary research into the causes, consequences, and cures of poverty.

For more background information on poverty measurement research in the U.S., visit the IRP FAQs: "How is poverty measured in the United States?," "What are poverty thresholds and guidelines?," and "Who is poor?" Also, see our research page on the history of poverty measurement.

An important part of IRP’s work has been to review existing poverty measures and develop alternative ones. The literature critiquing the official measure and suggesting alternative methods is large and includes many contributions from IRP researchers (see our FAQ #2, "How is poverty measured in the United States?" for more on this topic). Most poverty scholars agree that the official measure should be revised, although there is disagreement as to the best alternative.

Reorganization of Social Policy

Since the early 1990s, three developments have reorganized the practice of social policy for low-income Americans. Devolution has shifted policy authority downward from the federal government to state and local actors. Privatization has expanded the diversity of policy-relevant organizations and the variety of ways that relationships across organizations and programs are structured. Performance management has produced a new emphasis on program outputs and new systems of performance feedback and reward.

Mountain Association for Community Economic Development - http://www.maced.org/

Overview

MACED works so that Appalachian communities are better places to live. We partner with local people to build upon the strengths of the region and assist businesses that grow local economies and create opportunities for low-income people. 

 MACED invests with capital and commitment. We understand that a vibrant economy is critical, but is only one measure of a community’s well-being. Protected natural resources and engaged residents are also necessary to create a high quality of life. Local people and decision-makers must believe that a better future is possible and see concrete ways to get there.

 Three decades of dedication to the people and places of Appalachia have shown us that high expectations, vision and hard work are essential to accomplish results. That’s why they are the foundation for our current strategies. 

Goals

MACED works to create economic alternatives that make a difference to people and places in eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia. Work is organized into three major strategies.

 • Providing financial investments and technical assistance that helps local people and communities prosper.

 • Conducting research to inform and support good public policy that is inclusive and considers everyone affected.