Do public libraries impact local labour markets? Evidence from Appalachia

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the effect of public library programmes and participation on unemployment and labour force participation in Appalachia. Appalachia is an economically distressed area, mostly rural, and with a sustained lower level of labour force participation and a higher level of unemployment. As public library programmes can be cyclical to business cycles, that is, labour market outcomes, I use public library staff and the amount computers available as instruments. While ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates show no effect of adult or children’s programmes and participation on local labour market outcomes, spatial econometric estimates provide evidence of direct and indirect effects of adults programmes and participation on labour force participation.

KEYWORDS:

• local labour market
• labour force participation
• public library
• unemployment
• Appalachia

JEL:

• H40
• J64
• L39
• R59

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Izabella Barbosa, Josh Hall, Christopher Boudreaux, Brooke Conaway, John Deskins, Ricardo Freguglia, Daniel Grossman, Inácio Fernandes, Brad Humphreys, Randy Jackson, Jeffrey Lin, Josh Matti, Larissa Marioni, Eduardo Minuci, Adam Nowak, Hyunwoong Pyun, Amanda Ross, Justin Ross, Juan Sayago, Alexandre Scarcioffolo, Laura Schiavon, Shishir Shakya, Adam Storeygard, Christopher Yencha and Yang Zhou for helpful comments and discussion. I also thank the editors and referees who provided invaluable inputs on the manuscript. A working paper version of this manuscript is available on the MRPA website.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For a complete list of programmes for school-aged children, see http://www.ala.org/alsc/kickstart; and for a list of services and programmes for adults, see http://www.ala.org/tools/atoz/adultservices/adult_lib_svcs/.

2 A public library system is composed of a central library and its branches and bookmobiles.

3 Appalachia is comprised of the following states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginiaand West Virginia.

4 For instance, Knight and Nourse’s (1969) commission’s report asked for further studies on public libraries instead of providing recommendations per se. Even though there are numerous journals specialized on libraries, a focus on the impact or policy outcome of libraries is scarce.

5 The analysis with library population scaled by unduplicated service population yields similar results in terms of magnitude, sign and statistical significance and is available from the author upon request.

6 Further, conditioning on county fixed effects and lags of characteristics should be enough to mitigate the issue that neighborhood target variables can be endogenous to labour market outcomes and correlated with county-level target variables.

7 In response to budget cuts, several proposals for levies have been introduced into the ballots to specifically fund public libraries, either creating, renewing or increasing existing levies. These proposals have been mostly successful in the ballots (Fallows, 2014; Howard Fleeter & Associates, 2017; Hrin, 2018; Spokane Public Library, 2017).

8 A page is usually part-time and is responsible for keeping items in order. A library assistant can be either part- or full-time and generally performs clerical duties. Librarians are full-time employees who decide the items needed, offer programmes and training, and help people in general. Library managers are middle managers responsible for daily operations. Library directors are the main leadership in the library. For more details, see http://www.ala.org/educationcareers/careers/librarycareerssite/typesofjobs/.

9 The IMLS (2017, 2019) shows that for the period of study, there is no big change in the kind of collections held by public libraries, even though changes in the collection have occurred over time.

10 See http://www.ala.org/educationcareers/libcareers/become/.

11 One concern may be that adult and children programmes should be considered separately. Appendix B in the supplemental data online presents the spatial econometric analysis considering adults’ and children’s programmes and participation separately, relying on the number of computers as instrument. The results are in line with those of the main analysis.

12 One possible concern is the heterogenous effects across the conditional distribution of labour force participation and unemployment given differential costs associated with the labour market. Appendix D in the supplemental data online shows the results for quantile regressions without the spatial dependence and reveals no difference across the conditional distribution of labour market outcomes.

13 Because the estimation of spatial panel models relies on balanced panels only, the results presented in the main text consider only the 360 counties with public libraries during the whole period of analysis. Appendix C in the supplemental data online provides estimates considering counties with no public libraries as zero programmes and participation. The results are consistent in terms of sign, magnitude and statistical significance.

14 LeSage and Pace (2014) argue that the specification of the weight matrices should not have a large impact on estimates and inferences.