Dependence

Relying on others to meet one’s needs due to socioeconomic limitations or personal inabilities in providing for oneself. The concept of dependence and, in particular, age-related dependence is examined in this article. Differences in dependence levels are shown across U.S. regions, rural and urban areas, and racial groups. Implications of dependence are suggested for rural development.

The Concept of Dependence

Wimberley and Morris (1997) broadly define dependence in the following manner: a “dependent person, household, or community relies on others for [meeting] social, physical, and/or economic needs.” A dependent is generally unable to return goods, services or monetary payment in exchange for assistance. Children are an example of dependent persons.

Dependence is a distinctive human resource issue for rural areas, although the concept is scarcely studied and poorly understood. Across large geographic areas and populations in the South, for example, dependence is intertwined with poor quality of life conditions. Current research by the authors suggests that dependence may rival the importance of education and unemployment as justification for devising and implementing rural development policies and programs.

In the 1960s, the concept of dependence was used in studies of the changing composition of the population. Petersen (1961) classified the population into three groups: dependent children below age 15, the active population at ages 15 to 64, and aged dependents 65 years old and over. Age-related dependence ratios are calculated by comparing the number of dependents in a specific age category per 100 persons of contributing or working age. Petersen used these ratios to discuss changes in population over time (e.g., 1880 to 1955) and in various geographical areas.

Petersen also discussed the usefulness of the concept of dependence and the contribution dependence ratios make to the traditional demographic tools of population pyramids and sex ratios. In summary, he noted that many of the observations about social behavior were false or incomplete in generalizing about populations in the absence of a full understanding of their demographic structure. This statement foreshadowed the importance of dependence as it is currently being developed in relationship to other variables, such as education, that traditionally are considered as useful indicators of social behavior.

Stockwell (1964), using the same age divisions, made observations about the overall age distribution of the U.S. population, the changes in dependence over the time period 1900 to 1960, and the usefulness of dependence ratios in making urban and rural comparisons. Both Petersen and Stockwell found the greatest utility in using dependence to further explicate the demographic structure of a selected population.

The importance of the concept of dependence is also found in contemporary texts. One of the most recent (Weeks, 2007) points out that a parent must tend to children, and that it is more difficult to be economically productive in a population where the dependence ratio is high due to dependent children than where dependence is low. Furthermore, high youth dependence increases the need for school taxes, health services and subsidized housing; results in less discretionary income for households; and results in fewer tax monies available for infrastructure such as roads and communications systems.

Following the early studies by Petersen and Stockwell in the 1960s, the concept of dependence has not been the focus of sustained research, and the literature on well-being virtually ignores dependence. While many researchers examined population structure by percentages in various age categories, far less attention was given to dependence ratios. An exception is a study by Moland (1981) that examined farm and nonfarm nonmetropolitan population and African American populations based on 1950 and 1970 census data. Moland used dependence as a tool to examine the demographic structure and speculated on its connection to other changes in the population. Dependence was used primarily as a descriptive variable, and its relationship to other variables (e.g., employment patterns) in the research was not explored.

Morris (1989, 1994), in research on the nation’s elder population and the Southern Black Belt, proposed the relationship of dependence to other quality of life measures. Additionally, she made a case to redefine youth dependents as those aged 17 and below. This definition reflects a more socially meaningful division, recognizing the dependent state of most children through primary and secondary education. Raising the upper age limit for youth dependence by a year results in a larger youth category and reduces the supporting or active-age category as compared to earlier measures of youth dependence. Further recognized is that all youths are not dependent and that all elders are not necessarily retired and dependent upon others for assistance. It is assumed, however, that the exceptions in dependent-age groups tend to offset exceptions in the adult supporting-aged group. Using these revised age categories, Wimberley and Morris (1993) examined age-related dependence by race in the United States, the South, and across the Black Belt region using U.S. Census data.

Dependence may be defined in a number of ways, although the advantage of using age-related measures of dependence is that these measures provide reliable, comparable data across regions and various subgroups of the population. As a baseline measure of dependence, age-related dependence ratios serve as indicators of populations in need. As noted by Petersen (1961), the burden of dependence declines as the proportion of the active-aged population increases. Conversely, high ratios of youth and elder dependence place increased demands on households, communities and the population at large.

Regional, Nonmetropolitan and Racial Dependence Levels There are 62 dependents per 100 people of working age as calculated from the 2000 U.S. Census: 20 are elder and 42 are youth dependents. Thus, for every 100 people of working age—though not necessarily working— there are 62 who are either too young or past the customary age for work.

Although dependence is not uniform across Census regions, nonmetropolitan areas or racial groups, youth dependence generally runs at least twice that of elder dependence. Across regions, the elder dependence ratio is highest in the Northeast at 22 and lowest in the West at 18. In contrast, the Northeast’s youth dependence ratio of 39 is lowest for any region, whereas the West claims the highest youth dependence ratio of 43.

Nonmetropolitan dependence also varies across the country, and youth and elder dependence in nonmetro places generally are as much as five points higher than dependence in the population at large. When nonmetropolitan dependence is compared with metropolitan dependence ratios, the nonmetro difference grows even higher. In terms of how nonmetro families spend their resources, relatively more goes to provide for both the old and the young than is the case for metro families. And regionally, the U.S. South claims 45 percent of the nation’s nonmetropolitan population.

African Americans have a higher total dependence level, 68 per 100 of working age, than Whites or the general population. Nonmetro Blacks have an even higher total ratio of 70 dependents per 100. And in the South, where over 90 percent of the nonmetro African Americans live, their total nonmetro dependence ratio rises still higher to 71. Partly because of lower life expectancies among Blacks, Blacks have less elder dependence than Whites. The region within the South that contains this high concentration of African Americans is known as the Black Belt, and it stretches from Virginia through East Texas and up the Mississippi Delta to Arkansas and Tennessee, covering 623 counties and parts of 11 states.

Dependence, Quality of Life and Rural Development

The combined impact of region, nonmetro residence and race is clearly illustrated in the South. Indeed, the Black Belt South is the nation’s largest region of poverty. High youth dependence contributes to the high prevalence of poverty in this rural area as household incomes are spread across a larger-than-average number of dependents. The correlation of total, youth and elder dependence with poverty is notable and quite strong in the Southern Black Belt (Wimberley and Morris, 1995; Morris et al., 2002; Wimberley, 2007).

Rural development efforts to improve the quality of life in such rural regions must take dependence into account. Although employment and higher incomes may take some individuals out of rural poverty, community services in nonmetro areas face greater demands than in metro areas due to the overall higher levels of nonmetro dependence. For example, the high dependence levels of the rural South make it doubtful that rural economic development programs or labor market development will be successful without human resource development to move people, families and communities from dependence.

Specifically, rural programs must address needs brought about by higher levels of youth and/or elder dependence. In many rural areas there are few jobs for those who can work. But even with sufficient jobs, many people are not employable because of dependence and other human resource conditions. To assist the working-aged population to become employable, dependence-related needs for day care, education, transportation, health services and other rural human resource infrastructure needs must be taken into account.

Regional variations in nonmetro youth and elder dependence require different types of rural development responses to what constitutes the basic human resource needs of rural people and places. Therefore, the implications of dependence should be factored into the human resource side of rural development policies and programs.

— Libby V. Morris and Ronald C. Wimberley

See also

• African Americans; Development, Community and Economic; Inequality; Cultural Diversity; Policy, Rural Development; Policy, Socioeconomic; Poverty; Quality of Life; Underemployment; Welfare

References

• Moland, John, Jr. “The Black Population.” Pp. 464-501 in Nonmetropolitan America in Transition. Edited by Amos H. Hawley and Sara M. Mazie. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
• Morris, Libby V. “Youth and Aged Dependency Ratios in the Black Belt: Influence on Education.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gerontology, Minneapolis, MN, November 1989.
• Morris, Libby V. “Dependence in the Rural South.” Southern Rural Sociology 10, no. 1 (1994): 115-130.
• Morris, Libby V., Ronald C. Wimberley, Dawn Eaker, David Lynn, John McKissick, Walter Hill, Ava Hopkins, and Douglas C. Bachtel. Dismantling Persistent Poverty in the Southeastern United States. Athens, GA: Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia, 2002.
• Petersen, William. Population. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1961.
• Stockwell, Edward G. “Some Notes on the Changing Age Composition of the Population of the United States.” Rural Sociology 29, no. 1 (1964): 67-74
• Weeks, John R. Population. 10th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007.
• Wimberley, Ronald C. “Sociology with a Southern Face: Why Are We Sociologists and What Are We Doing about It in the South?” Social Forces 86, No. 3 (2008): 881-909.
• Wimberley, Ronald C. and Libby V. Morris. “Black Belt Counties: A Challenge to the Land-Grant System.” Pp. 63-74 in Challenges in Agriculture and Rural Development. Edited by Robert Zabawa, Ntam Baharanyi, and Walter Hill. Tuskegee, AL: Tuskegee University, 1993.
• Wimberley, Ronald C. and Libby V. Morris. “Introducing Dependence into the Rural Development Equation.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Arlington, VA, August, 1995.
• Wimberley, Ronald C. and Libby V. Morris. The Southern Black Belt: A National Perspective. Lexington, KY: TVA Rural Studies, 1997.
• Wimberley, Ronald C., Libby V. Morris, and Douglas C. Bachtel. “New Developments in the Black Belt: Dependence and Life Conditions.” Pp. 77-84 in New Directions in Local and Rural Development. Edited by Ntam Baharanyi, Robert Zabawa, and Walter Hill. Tuskegee, AL: Tuskegee University, 1992.