Who Is Rural?

The paper sets out to accomplish two things: (1) to determine if an identifiable "rural culture" exists in contemporary American society, and if so, (2) to investigate the debatable equivalence relationship that is assumed, often implicitly, among the sociocultural dimension of rurality and the ecological and occupational dimensions. One the basis of a factor analysis and subsequent classification of persons into a constructed is typology, we argue that a rural culture and its linked antithesis, and urban culture, do exist, at least with regard to three dimensions of social conservatism. The results of a multiple discriminant analysis suggest that although current residence and occupation are correlated with a rural culture, place of residence at age 16 along with several personal demographic features, such as religion, income and age, are perhaps more central to understanding the broader concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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