Demographic and Socioeconomic Change

in Appalachia

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

IN APPALACHIA

by

John Haaga

Population Reference Bureau

May 2004
2

About This Series

ìDemographic and Socioeconomic Change in Appalachiaî is a series of reports that

examine demographic, social, and economic levels and trends in the 13-state Appalachian

region. Each report uses data from the decennial censuses of 1990 and 2000, plus

supplemental information from other data sources.

Current reports in the series include:

• ìAppalachia at the Millennium: An Overview of Results from Census 2000,î by

Kelvin M. Pollard (June 2003)

• ìHousing and Commuting Patterns in Appalachia,î by Mark Mather (January

2004).

• ìThe Aging of Appalachia,î by John G. Haaga (April 2004).

• ìHouseholds and Families in Appalachia,î by Mark Mather (forthcoming).

Additional reports will cover: Labor Market Performance, Poverty, and Income

Inequality; Migration and Immigration; Population Change and Distribution; Geographic

Concentration of Poverty; and Race and Ethnicity.

You can view and download the reports by visiting either www.prb.org or www.arc.gov.

For more information about the series, please contact either Kelvin Pollard of the

Population Reference Bureau (202-939-5424, kelvinp@prb.org) or Gregory Bischak of

the Appalachian Regional Commission (202-884-7790, gbischak@arc.gov).

The authors wish to thank the Appalachian Regional Commission for providing the

funding for this series.

Population Reference Bureau

1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 520

Washington, DC 20009-3728

The Population Reference Bureau is the leader in providing timely and objective

information on U.S. and international population trends and their implications.

Appalachian Regional Commission

1666 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 700

Washington, DC 20009-1068

The Appalachian Regional Commissionís mission is to be an advocate for and partner

with the people of Appalachia to create opportunities for self-sustaining economic

development and improved quality of life.
3

Educational attainment of the adult population is probably the local characteristic

that economic development officials most want to highlight in presentations to

prospective investors and employers. This is partly a simple argument about the

workforce. Workers who have persisted and succeeded in their academic career are more

likely than others to have the specific skills, general knowledge, ability to acquire new

skills, and other personal characteristics that employers value. The concern with

educational attainment is also in part a concern for markets and local quality of life.

Firms that sell detailed geographic data to those making decisions on facility location rely

heavily in categorizing areas on data about educational attainment (and its close

corollaries, incomes and occupation).

Trends and differences in educational attainment are of more than local concern,

though. With some justice, Americans have always regarded the educational system as

an engine of social mobility and a means for ensuring civic participation. Individual

differences in academic success are always expected. But persistent differences in

educational attainment among regions, like persistent differences among races and social

classes, suggest that the engine is not working.

As Robert Mare pointed out in his analysis of educational attainment data from

the 1980 and 1990 censuses, the twentieth century saw a steady narrowing of sex, racial,

regional, and class differences in enrollment rates at the elementary and secondary levels,

as well as a steady improvement in the educational attainment of the adult population.1

While it is too soon to close the book on differences in dropout rates at these levels, this

paper will focus on what Census 2000 data tell us about the persistence of regional
4

differences in high school completion and tertiary education, essential predictors of how

populations will fare in a global, knowledge-based economy in the new century.

Regional and National Trends

For Appalachia, the 1990s were a decade of progress in absolute but not relative

terms. As Table 1 shows, the percentage of the adult population who are college

graduates increased during the 1990s in Appalachia and in each sub-region, as it did in

the country as a whole. But the gap between the Appalachian region and the US as a

whole grew slightly, from 6.1 percentage points to 6.6 percentage points. The increase in

Appalachia in the percentage of college graduates was somewhat greater in Southern

Appalachia than in Central or Northern Appalachia. Central Appalachia in 2000 had less

than half the national proportion of college graduates. This reflects a ìrich get richerî

trend: growth in the proportion of college graduates was fastest in the counties classified

as ìattainmentî counties (using the 2000 classification), which were already above the

national average in 1990. By contrast, the slowest growth in this proportion during the

decade was in the distressed counties.

Table 1

Percentage of Adult Population Who Are College Graduates, 1990 and 2000

1990 2000

U.S. Total 20.3 24.4

Appalachia 14.3 17.7

 North 14.4 17.7

 Central 8.8 10.7

 South 15.4 19.2

 Distressed 8.5 10.2

 Transitional 13.1 16.1

 Competitive 17.4 22.0

 Attainment 23.1 29.1

Sources: 1990 Census, STF3 file and 2000 Census, SF3 file, PRB analysis.
5

The increases during the 1990s were a continuation of a long-term national trend.

But in the last decade, the increase has slowed down. Between 1960 and 1980, the

average number of years of schooling for workers nationwide grew by just under two

years. This slowed to an increase of less than one year during the subsequent two

decades, 1980-2000.2

The college enrollment gap between upper-income and lower-income families

grew during the 1980s and early 1990s: the percentage enrolling in college increased

from 55 percent in 1980-82 to 66 percent in 1992 for recent high-school graduates from

families in the upper fifth of the income distribution, while for all high-school graduates,

the percentage rose from 39 percent to only 45 percent.3

 Once in college, students from

poorer families are more likely to drop out. A recent analysis of attrition of Berea

College students, mostly Appalachian residents, found that even with full tuition

scholarships, almost no room and board costs, and a standardized work-study program,

students from low-income families were at considerably greater risk of dropping out than

students from more middle-class families. This difference remained even in an analysis

that took into account their high-school grades, scores on college entrance tests, and

academic achievement at their high schools.4 The authors conclude ìfamily

environmentî ñ limited expectations for educational success, not counteracted by

encouragement from teachers and other early mentors ñ can be as great an impediment as

the direct and opportunity costs of college attendance.5

Geographic Variation

The map in Figure 1 shows the percentage of the adult population in each

Appalachian county who were college graduates in 2000. The counties with the darkest
6

shading are those where the proportion of graduates was above the national average;

those with the lightest shading had fewer than one in ten adults with college degrees. The

counties with low educational attainment are concentrated in central Appalachia,

especially in the mining regions. The counties with high educational attainment are

scattered around the region, with concentrations around metropolitan Atlanta and along a

belt leading from eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina up Interstate 81. As

Table 2 shows, only 18 of the 410 Appalachian counties had a higher percentage of

college graduates among their adult population than the national average of 24.4 percent.

Most of the counties in this list are homes to large universities: Cornell; Virginia Tech;

Pennsylvania State University, the universities of Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee,

Appalachian State University, Wake Forest and Mississippi State University. This is not

just an artifact of their high student populations, because the measure of educational

attainment is only for the population aged 25 and above, which excludes all but a small

fraction of the student population. Eight of these counties are estimated to be growing in

population faster than the national average (3.3 percent), and all but four counties were

growing faster than the average for the Appalachian region (2.2 percent), according to

estimates published by the US Census Bureau for the years 2000-2003.
7

Figure 1
8

Table 2

Appalachian Counties with Proportions of College Graduates above U.S.

Average, 2000

County % College graduates, 2000 Population growth, 2000-2003

Tompkins, NY 47.5 5.1

Shelby, TN 36.8 1.0

Centre, PA 36.2 4.3

Montgomery, VA 35.6 2.3

Oktibbeha, MS 34.8 -0.8

Madison, TN 34.2 2.2

Gwinnett, GA 34.1 14.4

Watauga, NC 33.2 0.3

Monongalia, WV 32.4 3.1

Knox, TN 29.0 2.9

Forsyth, NC 28.7 3.8

Cherokee, GA 27.0 17.4

Greenville, SC 26.2 4.1

Polk, NC 25.8 2.7

Athens, OH 25.7 3.5

Jackson, NC 25.5 3.6

Buncombe, NC 25.3 3.1

Jefferson, AL 24.6 -0.6

United States 24.6 3.3

Source: 2000 Census, SF3, PRB analysis, and US Census Bureau estimates, April 2004.

Figure 2 shows the change during the 1990s in the proportion of college graduates

for counties in the region. Those shaded brown and red, depicting rapid increase in

educational attainment, are largely the metropolitan or ìmetropolitan contiguousî

counties around Pittsburgh, Atlanta, the edges of the New York metropolitan area, and

some smaller cities like Asheville NC and Montgomery AL. As Richard Couto found in

an analysis of data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Censuses, the metropolitan counties

again in the 1990s set the pace in growth of the college-educated population.6

 The

counties shaded dark blue, with declining proportions of college graduates in the adult

population, are scattered around the region but with greatest concentration in Central

Appalachia. These county-level maps confirm the ìrich get richerî picture seen for the

larger region and sub-regions in Table 1.
9

Figure 2

In every state except Alabama and South Carolina, the proportion of adults who

are college graduates is lower in the Appalachian counties than in the rest of the state

(Table 3). The gap is especially wide in Maryland (a state with an especially high

proportion of college graduates), Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. In every state except

Alabama, New York, and Pennsylvania, the Appalachian counties have higher

proportions of the adult population without a high-school diploma or GED. Virginia and

Kentucky are again among the states with the widest disparities. In Maryland, North
10

Carolina, and Virginia, the Appalachian counties had more adults with less than highschool education than college graduates, while the reverse was true for the rest of the

state.

Table 3

Educational Attainment of Population aged 25 and over, by State, for

Appalachian and non-Appalachian Counties, 2000

% Less than HS % College graduates

Appalachia Non-Appalachia Appalachia Non-Appalachia

Alabama 24.6 25.1 19.3 18.5

Georgia 23.3 20.7 21.0 25.5

Kentucky 37.5 21.3 10.5 19.8

Maryland 21.4 15.9 14.4 32.3

Mississippi 31.9 25.8 14.0 17.7

New York 16.9 21.2 20.8 27.8

North

Carolina

24.2 21.3 19.1 23.3

Ohio 21.8 16.3 12.3 22.4

Pennsylvania 17.3 18.9 19.1 25.4

South

Carolina

24.7 23.3 20.6 20.4

Tennessee 26.6 22.2 17.2 21.5

Virginia 30.2 17.3 14.8 31.0

West Virginia 24.8 NA 14.8 NA

Notes: ìCollege graduatesî includes those with post-baccalaureate degrees. All counties in West Virginia are included in

Appalachia.

Source: PRB tabulations of Census 2000 data, SF3 release.

These intrastate differences are discouraging, because they persist after nearly three

decades of reform intended to even out disparities in funding among school districts.

Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia are among the states where courts

have ordered school finance equalization; in several other Appalachian states reform has

been initiated by the legislatures.7

Migration

The educational attainment of the adult population now resident in Appalachia

reflects both the performance of the regionís schools systems and the success of its

graduates in higher education, and also the in- and out-migration of persons with different
11

levels of schooling. To the extent that Appalachian residents who complete higher

education within the region stay, and both original residents and others completing higher

education outside the region move in, then the working-age population with higher

education grows. Appalachia will lose ground relative to the rest of the country if its

ìbalance of tradeî with the rest of the country is not positive, that is, to the extent that

those moving into the region have lower levels of education than those moving out.

To analyze the effect of migration on the educational attainment of the working

age population, we have selected five groupings of counties, to illustrate the range of

conditions within the Appalachian region.8

 These groupings of counties include:

• Seven counties in north-central Alabama. In 2003, the Appalachian Regional

Commission classified two of these as competitive counties, four as transitional,

and one as distressed. Three of the seven gained population during the 1990s

more rapidly than the nation as a whole, and none lost population.

• Twenty counties in northeastern Tennessee. Twelve of these are designated

transitional, and seven distressed. All gained population during the 1990s;

Cumberland county, grew much faster than the national average.

• Twenty-six counties in eastern Kentucky, stretching from Greenup in the north to

Whitley along the Tennessee border. Two form part of metropolitan Huntington,

four are ìmicropolitanî in the new classification, and the rest are outside microor metropolitan areas. All but two are distressed counties; and two counties are

now designated transitional. All grew moderately in population during the 1990s.

• Thirteen counties of southeastern Ohio, including Athens, home of the University

of Ohio. Eight were designated distressed in 2003, and five transitional. Noble

and Vinton counties grew rapidly during the 1990s, while Monroe county (like

other Ohio counties to its north and West Virginia counties to the east) lost

population.

• Eight counties of north central and northeast Pennsylvania, including rapidly

growing Monroe and Pike counties on the fringes of the New York metropolitan

area and a tier of four counties along the border with upstate New York. These

counties were all designated transitional in 2003.

None of these five sub-regions is a microcosm of Appalachia. But they do represent the

variation found within the region in economic prosperity, migration and population

growth, and distance from metropolitan areas.
12

The effect of migration on educational attainment among the adult population

varies among these sub-regions. As Figure 3 shows, of the five sub-regions examined,

three (Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee) had a net in-migration during 1995-2000 of

adults with less than a high school education. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, the numbers of

in-migrants and out-migrants without high-school diplomas balanced almost exactly. At

the other end of the educational spectrum, those with college degrees or higher, three subregions also gained through migration (Alabama, Pennsylvania and Tennessee),

Kentucky had a near balance in the flow of college graduates, and only Ohio lost a

significant number of college graduates through migration in those years.

Figure 3

Net Migration of Adults by Educational Attainment, Appalachian SubRegions, 1995-2000

-6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000

NE Alabama

NE Tennessee

E Kentucky 

E Ohio

NE Pennsylvania

Less than HS diploma BA or higher

More Adults Moving Out More Adults Moving In

Source: PRB tabulations of 1% PUMS, Census 2000.
13

Table 4

Percentage of College Graduates aged 25-34 who Lived in a Different State

in 1995

U.S. Total 23.4

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 17.0

 NE Tennessee 11.3

 E Kentucky 11.0

 SE Ohio 23.2

 NE Pennsylvania 21.4

Source: PRB tabulations of 1% PUMS, Census 2000

As is true for the rest of the country, Appalachian residents with less education

tend not to move long distances. College graduates, who are more likely to participate in

national labor markets, are most likely to move across state boundaries. Nearly a quarter

of 25-34-year-olds with college degrees lived in a different state in 2000 than they had in

1995, compared with only one in ten of those with high-school diplomas only. But the

more deprived Appalachian sub-regions appear not to be attracting their share of these

mobile, well educated young adults. As Table 4 shows, Eastern Kentucky and

Northeastern Tennessee had far lower percentages of in-migrants among their young

adult residents with college degrees.

Using detailed county-by-county tables released after the 1990 Census,

Obermiller and Howe showed that the Appalachian region had a favorable ìbalance of

tradeî in college students ñ those currently enrolled. Northern and Southern Appalachia

had about 100,000 more college students coming into the region than residents enrolled

elsewhere. Central Appalachia had a small net deficit, of around 4,000 students. But

migration of people aged 25 and over during 1985-90 offset somewhat the flow of

students, as about 20,000 more college graduates left than moved into the Appalachian

region.9
14

The effect of international migration on educational attainment in the Appalachian

region has so far been small, mainly because the region has a much lower percentage of

residents who were born in other countries (3 percent of the Appalachian population,

compared with 12 percent of the US population as a whole). As for the nation as a

whole, the foreign-born in Appalachia are more likely than those born in the US to have

less than a high-school education ñ but they are also more likely to have a college degree

than are native-born adults. In other words, immigrants are disproportionately

represented at the two ends of the educational distribution.

Age Patterns ñ Closing the Gap?

The standard Census tables (SF3) for counties show educational attainment for

the entire population over age 25. Though there are people who go back after a long

absence and obtain a diploma or complete a degree, most Americans complete their

formal education early in adulthood. For this reason, the educational attainment of the

adult population as a whole changes fairly slowly, as younger, more educated cohorts

reach age 25 and the older, less educated cohorts die off. The education gap between 50-

year-olds in Appalachia and 50-year-olds in the rest of the U.S. tells us more about

conditions two or three decades ago than about recent developments. If Appalachian

regions are catching up to the national average in college graduation rates, we would

expect to see this most clearly in the younger cohorts, even if the gap still remains large

in the adult population as a whole.

Two separate stories emerge from an examination of educational attainment by

age groups among adults. One is a picture of success for the Appalachian region, in
15

terms of high school completion rates. Table 5 shows that younger adults in Tennessee,

Kentucky and Ohio are considerably more likely to be high school graduates than are

older adults in the same places (unlike the nation as a whole, for which there is virtually

no difference across ages 25 to 59.) For 45-59-year olds, for example, Eastern Kentucky

is 22 percentage points below the national proportion of high-school graduates, while for

25-34 year-olds, the gap is 9 percentage points. Since those with less than high-school

education are the workers who have suffered actual wage decreases, due to competition

from workers overseas and immigrants,10 closing this gap is very important for the

region. Table 6 is similar to Table 5, but shows percentages of those who have graduated

from college. In no region is there clear evidence of the college graduation gap

narrowing.
16

Table 5

High School Completion by Age, U.S. Total and Appalachian Sub-Regions,

2000

Ages 25-34 35-44 45-59 60+

U.S. Total 83.9 85.0 84.9 68.0

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 82.8 83.4 82.0 60.4

 NE Tennessee 75.0 73.9 70.9 44.1

 E Kentucky 74.9 70.5 62.2 38.1

 SE Ohio 85.7 86.6 79.7 65.5

 NE Pennsylvania 86.6 88.0 86.1 67.8

Source: 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample, PRB analysis.

Table 6

College Graduation Rates by Age, U.S. Total and Appalachian Sub-Regions

Ages 25-34 35-44 45-59 60+

U.S. Total 27.5 26.0 27.7 16.5

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 22.6 27.8 24.8 12.4

 NE Tennessee 12.4 10.8 12.2 6.9

 E Kentucky 10.6 9.5 10.5 7.6

 SE Ohio 14.6 15.0 14.6 9.3

 NE Pennsylvania 18.3 16.7 20.6 11.9

Source: 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample, PRB analysis.

These cohort differences suggest that Appalachian school systems (and for that matter,

Appalachian families) have improved in their ability to keep children in school through

graduation, and narrowed the gap with the rest of the country. But the Appalachian

region is not producing, retaining, or attracting college graduates fast enough to narrow

the gap at the high end of the educational spectrum.

Table 7 focuses on the younger working age population, those aged 25-34 in

2000, most of whom completed their formal education in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In parentheses below the ìsome collegeî percentage are the percentage of persons in each
17

age group whose highest educational attainment is an Associates degree, most of which

are awarded by community colleges. All of the Appalachian sub-regions lag behind the

U.S total in college degrees in this age group, both for men and women. Of the five subregions, only Northeast Alabama (women and men) and Northeast Pennsylvania (women

only) have more than a fifth of the population with college degrees. The picture is more

mixed for Associates degrees: young women in three of the five Appalachian subregions are above the national average for their age group, as are young men in two of the

sub-regions.

One trend revealed by Table 7 that Appalachia shares with the rest of the country

is the reversal of the gender gap in college graduation rates. The proportion of new

degrees awarded to women has been climbing ever since World War II, and ever since

the mid-1970s, more young women than men have graduated from college.11 More

Associates degrees have been awarded to women than men nationwide since the late

1970s. Despite increases in the proportion of graduate and professional degrees awarded

to women during the same decades, though, men still dominate in post-graduate

education. The combined effect of these trends is seen in the higher educational

attainment for women than for men in the 25-34 age group, in the nation as a whole and

in Appalachian sub-regions. These are young people who completed their schooling in

the 1990s. In each of the Appalachian sub-regions, women in this age groups are more

likely than men to have college degrees or higher, and for those without college degrees,

women are more likely to have Associatesí degrees.
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Table 7

Educational Attainment of Young Adults (ages 25-34), 2000

Less than HS Some college

(Associateís Degree)

College graduate

Both Sexes

U.S. Total 16.1 30.7 (7.5) 27.5

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 17.2 32.9 (7.3) 22.6

 NE Tennessee 25.0 20.8 (3.8) 12.4

 E Kentucky 25.1 26.7 (5.8) 10.6

 SE Ohio 14.3 32.0 (7.2) 14.6

 NE Pennsylvania 13.4 27.9 (8.5) 18.3

 Women

U.S. Total 14.2 32.3 (8.5) 29.3

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 14.5 37.6 (7.6) 24.8

 NE Tennessee 21.8 23.0 (5.2) 13.9

 E Kentucky 24.0 30.7 (8.8) 11.0

 SE Ohio 12.9 35.1 (9.1) 17.5

 NE Pennsylvania 10.9 29.1 (9.5) 23.1

 Men

U.S. Total 18.0 28.6 (6.6) 25.8

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 19.8 28.3 (7.0) 20.4

 NE Tennessee 28.0 18.8 (2.5) 11.0

 E Kentucky 26.3 22.2 (5.3) 10.1

 SE Ohio 15.7 29.0 (5.3) 11.8

 NE Pennsylvania 15.7 26.8 (7.6) 13.9

Source: 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample, PRB analysis.

The educational attainment of the younger members of the work force is the most

revealing indicator for the regionís future, but it is also worth examining the educational

attainment of those in prime earning ages, approaching retirement years. Education as a

younger adult is the single most powerful predictor of health status at older ages.12 So

the educational attainment of the current pre-retirement population portends the future

challenges of an aging population for the region.13 Table 8 shows educational attainment
19

for persons aged 45-59 in 2000, for the US as a whole and for five sub-regions of

Appalachia.

The picture is not encouraging. All five sub-regions have lower proportions of

college graduates in this age group than the U.S. total, and only Northeast Pennsylvania

has a lower percentage of persons with less than high-school education.

Table 8

Educational Attainment of Older Working-Age Adults (ages 45-59), 2000

Less than HS Some college College graduate

U.S. Total 15.1 29.1 27.7

Appalachian sub-regions

 N Alabama 18.0 29.2 24.8

 NE Tennessee 29.1 19.7 12.1

 E Kentucky 37.8 19.0 10.5

 SE Ohio 20.2 23.5 14.6

 NE Pennsylvania 13.8 24.7 20.6

Source: 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample, PRB analysis.

Implications

The demand for educated workers has more than kept pace with the supply of

educated workers in the U.S. economy in recent decades, so that ìcurrent economic

returns to a college education are at least as high as they have been in sixty years.î14 The

widening during the 1990s of the gap in college graduation rates between Appalachia and

the rest of the nation is not a good portent for efforts to close the income gap and develop

the regional economy. The lagging of Central Appalachia, especially the distressed

counties, is especially discouraging.

Against this background, though, some bright spots stand out: many university

counties in Appalachia have higher proportions of college graduates than the national

average, and some saw rapid increases in educational attainment during the 1990s. This
20

suggests that the universities are serving as growth poles for the knowledge economy of

their regions, not just as sources of educated out-migrants benefiting the rest of the

country. The increase in the proportion of the working-age adult population with some

college attendance, particularly those with Associates degrees, is also a promising sign.

Several studies have found that returns to each year of college education are high (about

5-8 percent increase in earnings) and that Associates degrees, particularly in technical

fields, are valued by employers.15

During the next two decades, the ìcollege-ageî population of the Appalachian

region is expected to grow very little.16 This may provide a window of opportunity for

institutions of higher education to concentrate on increasing the proportion of collegegraduates in the working-age population, both by reducing attrition among those who

start college and providing opportunities to finish for the large numbers of people with

some college education, but no degree. Young people, especially college graduates, are

highly mobile. The Appalachian sub-regions with especially low educational attainment

among working adults are those that have failed to attract their share of educated inmigrants from other states.

Discussions of education policy usually focus on narrowly economic benefits.

Increasing educational attainment should be valuable to individuals, whether they leave

home or not, and, insofar as the educated young workforce stays near home, to the region

trying to attract investment and maintain a strong tax base. But there are political and

cultural benefits as well, again both for individuals and communities. These are harder to

measure, indeed invisible in the Census data used here, but may be as important in the

long run as the income effects. Cynthia Duncan, in a perceptive analysis of rural poverty
21

in three rural counties, including one in Eastern Kentucky, quotes extensively from

residents now working as teachers or social workers. Higher education gave them

personally a wider view of what was possible, and they see education as a key to

community development as well. One of her sources described progress in another

(pseudonymous) eastern Kentucky county, near an Interstate, where economic

development, educational attainment, and an improved civic life are mutually reinforcing:

In [the pseudonymous] county the people who might have left, with an education,

stayed when new jobs came in. And they started to do things differently.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving organized to oppose the corrupt court that was

letting drunk drivers go because they had large families that voted for these

officials. People who cared about education started running for the school board.

People started letting the county judge know what they wanted ñ not jobs for their

cousins, but roads and litter control, garbage pickupÖ. But for any of this to

happen, people got to have education, and they have got to have a job outside the

reach of the power structure.17

This nicely illustrates the complementarity of investments in physical infrastructure (the

Interstate) and human capital, and the payoff of both for seemingly unrelated areas like

public health and the environment. People with higher education not only earn higher

salaries and pay higher taxes, they expect more for themselves, their children, and their

communities. ìBut for any of this to happen, people got to have education.î
22

Appendix

A word of caution is needed about the quality of Census data on educational attainment.

Data on education attainment were reported on the sample questionnaire (ìlong formî) of

the Census, sent to about a sixth of households. Like all estimates based on samples

rather than a complete enumeration, the long form data are subject to sampling error,

which is worth noting especially for counties with small populations, and small changes

in the estimated percentages of college graduates. But data on educational attainment are

also subject to ìnon-sampling errorî, which is difficult to quantify or to adjust for with

statistical methods. Survey analysts describe a pattern of ìdegree creep,î a tendency of

respondents to exaggerate past accomplishments. Between decennial censuses, the

percentages of people in a particular cohort with college, graduate, or professional

degrees tends to increase, out of proportion to what can be accounted for by actual adult

education. Dan Black and his colleagues compared 1990 Census data with more detailed

data collected in a face-to-face survey, and found evidence that the Census data overstate

the prevalence of graduate degrees.18 There is no reason to believe that ìdegree creepî is

any greater a problem for data from Appalachia than anywhere else in the country, so

geographic comparisons should not be affected. But comparisons over time (within

cohorts) could be affected. Most of the increase in educational attainment over time, for

Appalachia and the rest of the nation, is real, but part of the increase, especially for older

people, is wishful thinking on the part of respondents.
23

 1

 Robert Mare, ìChanges in Educational Attainment and School Enrollment,î in State of the Union:

America in the 1990s, vol. II, Reynolds Farley, ed. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995). 155-214.

2 J. Bradford DeLong, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence F. Katz, ìSustaining U.S. Economic Growth,î in

Agenda for the Nation, Henry J. Aaron, James M. Lindsay, and Pietro S. Nivola, ed. (Washington, DC:

Brookings Institution Press, 2003).17-60. Table 2-1.

3

 David T. Ellwood and Thomas Kane, ìWho Is Getting a College Education? Family Background and the

Growing Gaps in Enrollmentî in Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to College, Sheldon

Danziger and Judith Waldfogel, eds., Russell Sage: New York, 2000: 283-324.

4

 Ralph Stinebrickner and Todd R. Stinebrickner, ìUnderstanding Educational Outcomes of Students from

Low-Income Families: Evidence from a Liberal Arts College with a Full Tuition Subsidy Programî

Journal of Human Resources, 38, Summer 2003: 591-617.

5

 This inference from a statistical study is echoed in more qualitative form by many of the Kentucky

residents interviewed by Cynthia Duncan, 1999, ch. 1.

6

 Richard A. Couto. An American Challenge: A Report on Economic Trends and Social Issues in

Appalachia. (Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 1994). 181-82.

7

 William N. Evans, Sheila E. Murray, and Robert M. Schwab, ìSchoolhouses, Courthouses, and

Statehouses after Serrano,î Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 16(1997): 10-31.

8

 To protect the confidentiality of respondents, the Census Bureau does not release microdata at the county

level. Thus for analyses that go beyond the tables released by the Bureau for every county in the nation, we

cannot use data covering exactly the Appalachian region, or particular regional of economic grouping of

counties. The five sub-regions used here are ìSuper-PUMAsî (Public Use Microsample Areas) designated

by the Census Bureau: numbers 01100 (north central Alabama), 47030 (northeast Tennessee), 21300

(eastern Kentucky), 39120 (east-central Ohio) and 42030 (northeast Pennsylvania).

9

Phillip J. Obermiller, Phillip J. and Steve R. Howe. Appalachian Migration Patterns, 1975-1980 and

1985-1990. (Lexington, KY: Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky, 2000). Table 9b.

10 James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston, eds. The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal

Effects of Immigration. Panel on the Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration, National

Academy Press: Washington DC, 1997

11 David Cotter, Joan Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman. Gender Inequality at Work. (Washington, DC:

Population Reference Bureau, 2004, forthcoming).

12 Mark D. Hayward and Bridget K. Gorman. ìThe Long Arm of Childhood: The Influence of Early-Life

Social Conditions on Menís Mortalityî, Demography, 41, 1, 2004: 87-108.

13 Haaga, John. Aging in Appalachia. (Washington DC: Population Reference Bureau, 2004).

14 DeLong, et al., p. 18.

15See Thomas J. Kane and Cecilia E. Rouse, ìThe Community College: Educating Students at the Margin

between College and Work,î Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (1999): 63-84, for a review.
24

 16 Regional Economic Models, Inc. Unpublished demographic projections (2004).

17 Cynthia M. Duncan. Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America. (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1999) p. 71-72.

18 Dan Black, Seth Sanders, and Lowell Taylor, ìMeasurement of Higher Education in the Census and

CPS.î Working paper, Maryland Population Research Center (2003).