About

Dr. Paige Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology at Penn State University. Her research interests include rural poverty, spatial inequality—specifically community and rural/urban inequalities and development issues—state and local governments’ policies, and racialized inequalities. Her work focuses on the local economy and the state as structural forces that influence place and population disparities. She has published on rural-urban disparities in local governments’ capacity, differential risks of experiencing poverty among racialized populations, and barriers to just transition from coal mining employment in the Appalachian Region. Dr. Kelly has also worked as a research consultant for the Federal Reserve and the World Bank. She teaches courses such as Introduction to Rural Sociology, The Sociology and Demography of Poverty in the United States, Theories of Rural Communities, and Statistics for Social Scientists I.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Sociology
• Public administration
• Demographic economics
• Business
• Economic policy
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• The Local Welfare State and Differences in Racialized Poverty

  Sociological Quarterly · 2024-10-14 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Urban Austerity Theory, Politicizing Space, and Cutback Policies across Urban and Rural Communities

  City and Community · 2023-07-21 · 7 citations

  articleSenior author

  Urban theorists offer varying explanations for why communities use austerity policies that limit or cut government. We develop a synthesis of political-economic and institutional explanations. Using this new synthetic approach, we analyze the characteristics of communities that promote the use of cutback policies and question whether relationships derived from urban theories can be extended across the urban-rural continuum. We draw on original primary data for over 1,000 communities. Our study provides a new lens on local austerity policies and the distinctiveness of the urban experience. We find that economic pressures, political context, and local governments’ characteristics influence cutback policies across both urban and rural America. Large metro counties use more cutback policies suggesting progressive communities are downsizing, and fiscal stress is a strong determinant. Among rural counties, political context and governmental attributes further influence cutback policies. Surprising similarities exist across urban and rural communities in citizen pressures to reduce government. The findings demonstrate that urban frameworks can be pushed beyond their conventional focus. Our study highlights the importance of viewing communities across a continuum rather than analyzing urban and rural communities as if they occupy different worlds.

  PublisherDOI

• Proceed with caution: US local governments and the American Rescue Plan

  Local Government Studies · 2023-11-27 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  Will a legacy of fiscal stress limit local governments’ willingness to make equity-focused investments even in the context of the relative surplus that American Rescue Plan funds provide for local governments in the US after COVID-19? Focus groups with local officials show the desire to address basic infrastructure investments (water and sewer) is primary, and concerns over recurring expenditure responsibilities, administrative burden and rising citizen expectations cause them to proceed with caution. However, the flexibility and size of ARPA funds make more progressive investments possible.

  PublisherDOI

• Challenging austerity under the COVID-19 state

  Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society · 2022 · 17 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Economic policy

  Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic represented a short-term shift in US social policy. Under the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the federal government prioritised households by raising the floor for child support and unemployment benefits, and restoring fiscal federalism by providing increased funds to state and local governments. Our 2021 nationwide survey finds local governments with more citizen participation and Black Lives Matter protests plan to prioritise social equity investments, while those with more Trump voters plan to prioritise physical infrastructure with their ARPA funds. COVID-19 led to new policy approaches that expand government investment. While the federal changes for households (expanded unemployment insurance and child tax credits) ended in 2021, the increased aid to state and local governments continues. These have the potential to help reshape citizen expectations and repair federal–state–local relations.

  PublisherDOI

• Whose Need Matters?: The Local Welfare State, Poverty, and Variation in US Counties’ Social Service Provisioning

  Social Currents · 2021 · 27 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Sociologists have long studied poverty across localities. Yet, little research focuses on local governments and the social services they directly provide to those in-need. Researchers concerned with the US welfare state note that localized administration of social programs creates geographic variability in provisioning and potential for status-based discrimination, such as racism, to influence policy. This paper addresses two questions: (1) To what extent does local need influence counties’ provision of social services? (2) Does the provision of social services vary according to which social group is most in-need? Conceptually, we break ground by placing spatial inequality research on local disparities into dialogue with sociology’s welfare state tradition. Using novel data for 1,600 county governments across the nation, we find that local need as measured by the poverty rate is related to greater social service provisioning, suggesting governments’ responsiveness. However, provisioning is unequal when the level of need is disaggregated among social groups, race/ethnicity, and gender. Higher poverty among whites is associated with greater provisioning of social services. This study showcases possible means by which unequal patterns of social welfare support emerge and reveals the potential role of local governments in perpetuating inequalities by privileging some groups’ need more than others.

  PublisherDOI

• JenniferShermanDividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American DreamUniversity of California Press, 2021, 284 p., $85.00

  Population and Development Review · 2021-09-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Rural America has occupied an increasingly central role in the nation's consciousness since the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. While highlighting a previously overlooked key constituency, this increased focus has often had the unfortunate effect of further ostracizing and othering rural people and places through gross characterizations and stereotyping. News reports and popular works of fiction often emphasize rural populations as backwards, ignorant, and “voting against their own self-interest”—or as manipulated by Trump's Republican Party, as if they do not understand their own best interests. Lacking from these depictions are thorough and empathetic interrogations of the larger structural contexts in which rural populations form beliefs and cultures. Sherman's thoughtful study of the community of Paradise Valley, conducted through ethnographic research in 2014, is almost prophetic in providing insights and answers to the nation's current questions about rural Americans. Dividing Paradise builds off her previous work and offers a compassionate and humane window into the lived experiences of a community caught in the national and global headwinds of economic restructuring, rising economic inequality, and political polarization. The book's central goal is to “explore the processes by which [various] types of social inequality are produced and reproduced as well as their impacts on individuals and the larger community and society” in which they are situated (8). Dividing Paradise begins with an introduction to the theoretical and methodological approaches Sherman used to study Paradise Valley. Chapter Two provides a historical overview of Paradise Valley, her case-study community, as well as the recent demographic changes restructuring the social inequalities present in the community. Here Sherman describes her typology of “newcomers” and “old-timers” that are the central point of comparison for Paradise Valley's residents’ experiences and the unique challenges they are likely to face. The following chapters go into greater detail of the disparate lived experiences of “newcomers” and “old-timers.” Newcomers are those in Paradise Valley who have lived in the valley for a shorter period (fewer than 20 years), have greater real and symbolic resources, as well as generally more liberal political views. Sherman details how idyll notions of rural places as slower paced, safer, and more family friendly drove newcomers to migrate to Paradise Valley. While newcomers faced some economic challenges, such as underemployment, salary, or prestige, Sherman documents how many overcame these obstacles. For example, newcomers can secure employment opportunities, housing, and consistent childcare through their greater status-based resources, such as human capital in the form of education, job skills, and experience; cultural capital in the form of “soft-skills”; and social capital through connections with other community members. Perhaps most important to dividing the experiences of newcomers and old-timers was the considerable wealth of many newcomers that allowed them to live comfortably on lower incomes and afford quality housing. Meanwhile, old-timers are residents who have lived in the valley for longer, have fewer resources, and have more conservative political views. In contrast to newcomers, old-timers struggled to survive in Paradise Valley as they tended to have fewer ways to secure even basic necessities: work, housing, childcare, and food. Yet, Sherman documents how old-timers “clung to ideologies associated with the American Dream, including hopes of economic success and upward mobility achieved through individual effort, ability, and perseverance” (85). Sherman illustrates how marginalization and resentment among old-timers emerges from their sense that the future they had expected or hoped for in Paradise Valley had been stolen from them. In Chapter Five, Sherman examines the various mechanisms driving social class divides between newcomers and old-timers, as well as how the residents of Paradise Valley make sense of these divisions. The focus is on how differences in types and amount of capital produce and reproduce inequalities within the community. For example, Sherman notes how access to social capital in the form of sharing information about employment or housing opportunities were largely hoarded among social networks of newcomers. Thus, while newcomers experienced the community as “tight knit,” old-timers experienced significant social isolation with few people to turn to for support. Sherman illustrates how cultural capital—“taste and preferences in art, music, food and drink, and leisure activities as well as differences in political stances and in aspirations for children's outcomes”—further divided the residents of Paradise Valley (132). Sherman describes how newcomers practicing “class-blindness” largely failed to acknowledge the ways in which “their social activities rarely included old-timers and often overlooked the role that social class played in structuring cultural interests and competencies among residents” (135). Finally, Sherman explores how education and schools provided social and cultural capital to newcomers, while furthering the disenfranchisement of old-timers’ children through unfair treatment due to greater social and economic barriers. The major success of Sherman is her interrogation of how rural Americans use moral capital, or conceptions of morality and deservingness, to make sense of their lives. In her previous book, Those Who Work, Those Who Don't, Sherman demonstrated how the community of Golden Valley, whose residents generally lacked material resources, constructed social boundaries through perceptions of morality around having a job or not, utilizing social welfare or not. In Dividing Paradise, Sherman interrogates a community with significant local inequality in material resources and the role that moral capital plays in contributing to and perpetuating social differences between newcomers and old-timers. Newcomers consistently emphasized their concerns for issues of social inequality and poverty and still failed to make connections to old-timers in need. Instead newcomers judged old-timers’ misfortunes as the result of their lack of work ethic and morality, and of personal flaws. Simultaneously, old-timers often clung to idealized visions of rural morality, such as hard work, self-sufficiency, or not using social welfare support, as well as family values to create positive sources of meaning and dignity. This often resulted in old-timers perpetuating the same judgments as new-timers among themselves, thereby diminishing their capacities to maintain strong social networks. Sherman offers insight into how local inequality contributes to a sense of social isolation or abandonment and its connection to anti-governmental views: “These feelings of exclusion combined with the sense of being invaded or attacked by an outside force… helped to shape their worldviews, including the sense of distrust and self-protection,” that led to their distrust of “the democratic process and that their concerns weren't addressed by local or national leaders and institutions” (175). Dividing Paradise concludes by calling attention to how one rural community serves as a microcosm of broader social class divides across the United States. Sherman provides a road map for understanding how social inequality drives experiences of inclusion or exclusion and emphasizes the need for greater attention to how various forms of real and symbolic capital produce and reproduce social inequality. Sherman concludes by calling for “substantive changes in perspectives, behaviors and the structures of our communities and the larger economy to overcome class-blindness, apathy, and anger, and (re)create communities and a nation in which we are united in our shared desires to flourish together and pursue our dreams” (197). The tale of Paradise Valley is an indispensable resource for social scientists interested in social inequality and its impacts. While scholars of rural America will find this book's themes familiar, it provides significant theoretical contributions for understanding and further investigating ongoing changes in rural populations and places. Sherman's work will also appeal to researchers interested in the mechanisms driving social inequality and political polarization in the United States. The author's ethnographic research is rigorous in both methodological and theoretical approaches, yet accessible both for professionals and undergraduates. Dividing Paradise should be a staple for anyone seeking to develop greater social class consciousness as well as to understanding the perennial question of “what is going on in rural America?”

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Local Governments across the Rural–Urban Continuum: Findings from a Recent National County Government Study

  State and Local Government Review · 2019-12-01 · 27 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Social Bases of Rural‐Urban Political Divides: Social Status, Work, and Sociocultural Beliefs

  Rural Sociology · 2018-11-15 · 70 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The rural‐urban political divide has sparked media and social science concern. Yet national studies of rural and urban voters have largely failed to draw from the distinct conceptual literatures produced by rural sociologists. We take a new look at individuals’ voting choices, building from two rural sociological literatures, research on spatial inequality and on the rural‐urban continuum, to identify the social bases anteceding Republican voting in presidential elections. We analyze three social bases along which rural‐urban populations vary: social structural statuses, work and employment, and sociocultural values and beliefs. We question the degree to which rural‐urban differences can be accounted for by these factors. Data are from approximately 9,000 respondents to the General Social Surveys for election years 2000–2012. Our findings demonstrate that the literatures produced by rural sociologists provide a strong conceptual foundation for explaining rural‐urban voting differences. Rural and urban residents’ differential social statuses account for the greatest variation in their voting choices. Sociocultural values and beliefs, particularly attitudes toward domestic social issues, are also important. Findings add significant insight into the variety of factors that differentiate rural‐urban individuals’ voting choices as well as illuminate the need for greater emphasis on exurban voters.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mildred E. Warner

  5 shared

• Xue Zhang

  Cornell University

  4 shared

• Linda Lobao

  The Ohio State University

  4 shared

• Tiffany Williams

  Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

  1 shared

• Kerry Ard

  The Ohio State University

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Environment and Natural Resources

  Ohio State University

  2021