1 Challenges and Opportunities in Poor Rural Communities Today, data at the national level show a strong economy. Unemployment is near a half-century low, and economic output is growing at a solid pace. But we know that prosperity has not been felt as much in some areas, including many rural places.
The authors indicate that as early as in the 1980s negative and positive effects were basically cancelling each other out but strong positive spillovers returned in the 1990s. Moreover, preliminary follow-up work with a different database going up until 2014 seems to suggest that another recovery of the benign productivity-employment relationship may have emerged (though these results could be subject to change).