We discovered an emerging non-metropolitan mortality penalty by contrasting 37 years of age-adjusted mortality rates for metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan US counties. During the 1980s, annual metropolitan-nonmetropolitan differences averaged 6.2 excess deaths per 100,000 nonmetropolitan population, or approximately 3600 excess deaths; however, by 2000 to 2004, the difference had increased more than 10 times to average 71.7 excess deaths, or approximately 35,000 excess deaths. We recommend that research be undertaken to evaluate and utilize our preliminary findings of an emerging US nonmetropolitan mortality penalty.

Prison construction experienced explosive growth over the 1980s and 1990s. Many poor rural communities invited prisons into their environs, anticipating jobs and economic development. However, with one notable exception, no ex post empirical studies exist of the economic effects of prison construction on rural counties. Following an extensive review of the literature, this research uses a quasiexperimental control group method to examine the effect of state-run prisons constructed in rural counties between 1985 and 1995 on county earnings by employment sector, population, poverty rate, and degree of economic health. Analysis suggests a limited economic effect on rural places in general, but may have a positive impact on poverty rates in persistently poor rural counties, as measured by diminishing transfer payments and increasing state and local government earnings in places with relatively good economic health. However, there is little evidence that prison impacts were significant enough to foster structural economic change.

This paper provides an assessment of the conceptual basis of community forestry from around the world, based on case studies presented in the literature, mainly over the last decade. More than 400 documents were examined for this comprehensive qualitative meta‐study (meta‐theory, meta‐analysis, meta‐method, and meta‐synthesis) of community forestry. An overall conclusion is offered regarding the extent to which community forestry can be adapted to foster practices that enhance livelihoods, particularly for poverty populations, in rural United States communities. Special attention is paid to signifiers of community empowerment and reflexivity as well as other elements of success suggested in the literature.