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Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America

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Carr and Kefalas's HOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE:THE RURAL BRAIN DRAIN AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR AMERICA is a scientific, yet heart-felt look at the demise of small town rural America. Setting up in a renamed Iowa town, the authors ask why the best and the brightest often leave their heartland roots behind and then ask what can be done to reverse the trend. They divide rural young people up into four main categories:

1) The Achievers--those who are not only personally driven to succeed, but praised throughout their communities for their talent and achievements. They earn awards, go off to college, and never return because they have over-qualified themselves to return home.

2) The Stayers--those who want to make a go of it in the only place they have ever called home. They love their families, the community, and the opportunity to raise their kids in the homeland, despite the fact that employment opportunities are limited and the chance to earn high wages low.

3) The Seekers--As Carr and Kefalas put it, "What the Seekers know, with the utmost certainty is that they do not want to stay in the countryside all of their lives."

4) The Returners--Whether an Achiever or a Seeker, the Returners decide in time that there is no place like home, even if that means a lower standard of living or the abandonment of a dream.

As one who left a small town, the descriptions and motivations of each group are spot on. I felt as if I was re-living my own upbringing and decisions. In that regard, the book is gripping. The book's weakness rests in the solutions that Carr and Kefalas propose. They recommend immigration and the broadening of the population base, which have the feel of abstract and sociological solutions out of a textbook. Their attempt to help is honest, but the truth is that no one has the solution.

It's the irony of all ironies that the Midwestern United States is referred to as "the Heartland", because in some parts of the region, you'd be hard-pressed to find a pulse.

Due to rapidly aging populations, and the steady outflux of the university-educated young, small towns now confront a stark and unprecedented threat to their existence. Economies are faltering, tax bases rapidly eroding, and populations already underserved are finding it nearly impossible to attract health-care professionals, particularly specialists and psychiatrists. "Hollowing out the Middle" breaks little new ground in acknowledging an age-old problem, which has only intensified since the 1980's "farm crisis"....but it does provide a simple analysis of the trends working against Middle America, and the way that the small town movers and shakers have only succeeded in aiding and abetting the demise of their communities in many instances. As a long-overdue "kick in the pants", it is hoped that this book could stimulate quick and pragmatic adjustments to timid strategies that have taken hold of Main Street, America.

One such strategy that Carr and Kefalas identify is the "creative class" prescription offered by popular author Richard Florida. Briefly stated, this is the belief that "if you build it, they (the talented young) will come", lured by state of the art libraries, swimming pools, and sculpture parks. "Not so fast", Carr and Kefalas caution...can even spanking new facilities compete with the natural wonders of the mountains, lakes and oceans that other regions offer? And what of the simple fact that professionals can earn more money in the big cities?

Instead of locking into strategies that ultimately may fail, Carr and Kefalas recommend that small towns develop strategies to enable the young people who are "left behind"... the children of the working class, who are seemingly "trapped" in the towns that their more fortunate peers abandon.

The authors also recognize that small towns are fertile grounds for xenophobia, as promulgated by the likes of Iowa Congressman Steve King, and former Colorado politician Tom Tancredo. Small towns must overcome their tendencies to be "isolated islands", and welcome all newcomers including immigrants. High-tech jobs should be pursued, along with much-needed diversification in agricultural enterprises.

"Hollowing Out the Middle", at a mere 170 pages, only touches the tip of the iceberg... but it is a beginning. The alternatives, including a proposal for the "Buffalo Commons" (a strategy which seems to advocate giving the western plains back to the Indians) are not very pretty. A Balkanized, disjointed America of the haves and the "left-outs" is in the future unless actions are taken quickly.

What can attract an intellectual to rural society? "Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America" is a discussion of the exodus of thinkers from middle America and the heartland. The authors, Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, moved to a small town to study the social aspects of working class people who stay in their home towns and try to make ends meet for the good of themselves and their town. These towns, they argue, are hurt most when their brightest young people leave upon reaching adulthood. An interesting discussion of the fate of small town America and what could truly be the cause, "Hollowing Out the Middle" is a fascinating and highly recommended read.

Hollowing Out the Middle, the rural brain drain and what it means for America,
PJ Carr, MJ Kefalas, Beacon press


This book made me face up to being a thoughtless "achiever" from a town like Ellis in the post world war II era. While I never felt coddled by the 8,000 member towns educators, and was taught from a young child that physical work mattered a lot, still the resources available to and directed at a favored social sector made it easy to climb aboard that train. Others, less sure of themselves, maybe too virtuous, less encouraged at home, slowly fell behind. It certainly was not raw intelligence that led to success as an engineer from a "local shift boss college". Many who were left off that train were smarter, many more were just as smart then and admirable "stayers" now, 50 years later.

The authors have it right. More so now for this globalized world. We have to divide those educational and support resources better so the need to leave, and then forget is made no greater than the desire to stay and contribute over a lifetime.

Larry N.

Hollowing Out the Middle provides a very informative study of the "brain drain" and the remaining young resident's characteristics, history, and development in a small midwest town. Economic,educational,social and geopolitical precursors leading to the present diminished conditions in many of these small towns are also analyzed as are potential future strategies to address them. Thank you Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas.

This book put in to words a concept that had been nagging at the back of my brain for many years. Every business leader, teacher, administrator, economic development director, politician and any interested person in every small community in American should read this book.

Don't expect cookie cutter solutions, but thought provoking presentations of rural youth and some of the reasons that they leave or stay along with a start toward developing strategies for dealing with the negatives.

The authors claim small towns are unintentionally contributing to their own demise by pushing out the best and brightest, while virtually ignoring the people who are likely to stay (leaving behind low-skilled people with low income futures).

I suspect that the authors have confused correlation with causation, and I would draw the arrow in the other direction: migration from rural areas is a direct result of people following the money. There's an ironic bit of American exceptionalism here -- urbanization is tied to wealth across the globe and throughout history so any explanation of "Ellis" should first decide whether it follows this trend or is atypical. Or to put it another way, cities (and suburbs?) have always offered more diversity and broader horizons, so why is the hollowing out happening now? I find it unconvincing that it's the guidance counsellors of Iowa who are driving this trend!

The real questions for me (unasked here), are whether the specific wealth disparity between urban and rural in the USA in 2010 is in line with other developed nations (and across time?), and whether specific American policies affect the wealth disparity one way or the other. I'm no social scientist, but I've read Omnivore's Dilemma, so off the top of my head I would suggest that volume 2 of this book look at the effects of farm, fuel, & water subsidies, food purchasing habits, free trade agreements, employment patterns in related industries, and transit costs as root causes for the hollowing out trend.

This text is a quick read, but brings clearly into focus a huge problem in America. A MUST READ FOR EVERY US CITIZEN!

I thought the book was both interesting and informative. The fact that qualitative data was the basis for the entire book was concerning but overall how else would you measure the construct of interest? The book sheds light on a fading way of life most people never think about. Personally, I can see the very same thing happening in the small towns near my hometown. I've heard this described as "leftist propaganda" but for what I ask??? If you believe this book is fictional or an exaggeration of the reality of many rural towns, I would bet the farm you haven't driven through the Heartland or Appalachia recently.