ABSTRACT
This is our second major study of homeless and runaway youths in small-to medium-sized urban areas in four Midwestern states (see Whitbeck & Hoyt, 1999). We believe the Midwestern cities in which we interviewed these young people lend particular importance toward understanding the prevalence and behaviors of runaways in the United States. The cities in which we worked were not “magnet” cities for runaways such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, or New York, which draw more diverse and “nomadic” populations of homeless and runaway adolescents. The adolescents we interviewed represent a largely unacknowledged and unpublicized population of the country’s runaway and homeless youths. If they are living in Des Moines, Omaha, or Wichita, we can assume they are also on the streets and in shelters in other similarly sized cities across the nation.
