The wellbeing of communities, large and small: a ponderance of HRD

摘要

If the U.S. 2016 Presidential election gave us any indication of the many challenges facing the 21st century, one is the deepening economic divide among the communities. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released the county-level GDP data showing that rural areas have been growing at a much slower rate than urban areas due to the lack of equitable exposure to the rapidly growing private service-providing supersector group (Gascon and Reinbold 2019). According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, the service-providing supersector group includes the following major sectors: Trade, Transportation, and Utilities; Information; Financial Activities; Professional and Business Services; Education and Health Services; Leisure and Hospitality. This super-sector group contributes a combined employment of 131.25 million (https://www.bls. gov/iag/tgs/iag07.htm) in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, a recent Brookings report defined this divide more precisely as the nation's dynamic 'superstar' - metropolitan areas vs. most everywhere else.