LA Tech Center for Rural Development

Community Capacity Index Project

This project is to develop a set of indices of rural community capital (RCCI). The indices are research-based and use commonly available data sets. We are using regression analysis to test how well the indices predicted changing median incomes and population for rural communities in Louisiana.

What is the Rural Community Capacity Index (RCCI)?

The Rural Community Capacity Index is a measure of the inherent capacity of a rural community at a particular point in time relative to other rural communities. It allows policy makers to predict which communities are more likely to be economically viable based on seven key attributes: Human Capital, Social Capital, Political Capital, Natural Capital, Cultural Capital, Built Capital, and Financial Capital.

The RCCI has two primary benefits to users:

It uses existing data that are widely available so that it does not rely on additional data collection efforts such as surveys or case studies, which are cost prohibitive at the national level.

It incorporates factors into the model that are recognized as being important to community success, such as political effectiveness and social connections, as well as the traditional factors such as economic diversity, infrastructure and human capital.

Rural Community Economic Viability

For the purpose of developing and testing the RCCI, we have defined an economically viable rural community as one in which incomes are increasing and population is stable or growing. Because of vast regional differences in population change and to better capture those towns that are performing better or worse than their neighbors, our measure of population change is the difference between the percentage change in population in the community and the percentage change in population for the county in which the community resides. Population change alone is not a sufficient measure of economic viability. Although the number of jobs or new residents is often used as the measure of community development success, the incomes of the residents are vitally important to the viability of the community. O’Brien, et al. (1998) noted a falling viability index for a Missouri town after the installation of an industrial hog plant—the plant attracted many low wage workers to the town, but the town lost businesses. Flora, et al. (2004) notes that certain industries may bring jobs, but they “may not be quality jobs, that pay a livable wage.” A community is economically viable only if it has the financial resources to provide services to its residents.

The Design of the RCCI - Seven Community Capitals

The RCCI is a composite index number made up of seven sub-indices which are the “community capitals” proposed by Dr. Cornelia Flora. Flora has proposed that community outcomes are influenced by the different types of capital investments applied to that community. Some of these investments are easily measured and widely available, such as distance from the town to a major airport or metropolitan center, and some of them are not directly measurable and require readily available proxies if they are to be quantified. As Flora et al. (2004) remind us, “it takes more than just a bankroll to help projects succeed—it also takes vision.”

The Design of the RCCI - Index Components

Index components, the specific pieces of data used to build the index, were selected based upon an extensive literature survey. We looked for components to build the index that were clearly factors in rural community success, based on research. We also looked for factors that were unambiguous in the direction of their impact on economic success. For example, the percentage of the population that votes in elections is often used as a measure of social capital. However, there was much variance in the literature about what voting rates actually mean, and what they ultimately say about a community. For example, wealthy homogenous communities were as likely as poor inner-city communities to see low voter turn out. In the former case, low turnout was thought to mean a high rate of satisfaction with government. In the latter it meant a high degree of political disengagement. We also looked for those factors that could be calculated from existing community-level data that are consistently collected around the country. Leadership skills, and the level and quality of local leadership, are clearly factors in rural community success. However leadership is not something tracked easily or consistently by normal data collection methods.

Application of the RCCI to Rural Policy and Programs

The Rural Community Capacity Index (RCCI) is a simple tool that policy makers can use to target economic and community development assistance programs to communities. The use of indices to compare communities is not a new idea. We found many examples of indices in our literature review (O’Brien et al., 1998; Florida, 2002; Haynes, 2003; Herrera-Ulloa et al., 2003; Schlossberg and Zimmerman, 2003). Zoeteman (2000) observed that indices provide an indispensable oversight for policy-makers. Schlossberg and Zimmerman (2003) noted that scores for each index give quick-hit pieces of data that are tailor made for short information media. The simple structure of an index is convenient for communicating with policy-makers and legislators, since indexing provides a big-picture understanding of the issue in a matter of minutes.

Does the index work?

We will test the explanatory power of the RCCI by developing an index with 15 year old data and comparing the index numbers of rural communities in Louisiana against the actual change in income and population that occurred in the communities over the 15 year period. This will be finished by June, 2006.

This project was funded by a Rural Development NRI grant from USDA-CSREES. We would like to thank Dr. Patricia Hipple of USDA for her encouragement and support.

We would also like to thank Dr. Deborah Tootle of LSU and Dr. Davy Norris Jr. of LA Tech University for their input into the design of this project. Dr. Patrick Jun, of LA Tech University, provided invaluable assistance with spatial data analysis.

Publications and Presentations

Community Development Society Paper (6/06)

Higgins, E. and P. McCorkle. (2006) "The Development of a Rural Community Capacity Index – Based on Cornelia Flora’s Community Capital Framework" Paper presented at the Community Development Society Meeting, St. Louis MO June 25-28, 2006. (In MS Word)

Presents preliminary results of index development for 139 rural communities in Louisiana.

NRI Project Directors Meeting Poster (1/06)

This is the poster created for the NRI Project Directors Meeting in January 2006. It is larger and provides more information about the project than the SRSA poster. It is an Adobe Acrobat file

Southern Rural Sociology Association Meeting Poster (1/06)

This is the poster of the project done for the Southern Rural Sociology Association Meeting in Orlando, Florida January 2006. It is an Adobe Acrobat file

Project Bibliography 6-06

This is our current bibliography for the project (in rich text format).

Community Development Society Presentation Powerpoint (6/06)

"The Development of a Rural Community Capacity Index – Based on Cornelia Flora’s Community Capital Framework" Powerpoint presentation that corresponds to the paper presented at the Community Development Society Meeting in St. Louis June 25-28, 2006.

Project Updates

June 11, 2006

Posted by admin on 06/09/06

We have completed the data entry for the project, and Pat has run the preliminary regressions! We will be presenting our findings at the Community Development Society Meeting at the end of June.