ABSTRACT
Each year, the federal Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in the United States computes a composite index to measure economic distress in the counties within its jurisdictional boundaries. The index provides an annual snapshot of a county’s economic status, relative both to other counties in the ARC region and to the nation as a whole. Past empirical evidence suggests that improvements in the index often coincide with a county’s location in a “growth-prone” metropolitan region. This chapter investigates the prospect that this perceived inverse relationship between growth and economic distress is moderated by the quality of a county’s housing stock. Specifically, change in economic distress is analyzed as a function of growth, housing quality, rurality, interactions between these variables and a handful of controls. The results demonstrate that while business growth does, on average, appear to correlate with decreased economic distress in ARC counties, changes in housing quality can negate or amplify this association. Crucially, rural counties experience these interaction effects with much greater intensity than metropolitan counties. The findings therefore suggest that housing stock quality and upkeep are critical leverage points at which to intervene in [rural] social systems to meaningfully enhance quality of life in the administrative Appalachian region.
