Tim Slack
Professor Louisiana State University
- Baton Rouge LA
Dr. Slack's is an expert on social, economic, and demographic change with a special focus on rural people and places.
Biography
His book, coauthored with Shannon M. Monnat, Rural and Small-Town America: Context, Composition, and Complexities (University of California Press, 2024), paints a social scientific portrait of rural America. The book examines social, economic, and demographic changes and how these changes present both problems and opportunities for rural communities. Throughout, empirical evidence is used to confront common myths and misunderstandings about rural people and places.
Areas of Expertise
Research Focus
Social Stratification & Social Demography
Dr. Slack’s research focuses on social stratification, social demography, and rural sociology. He draws on secondary data (e.g., U.S. Census Bureau) and primary data collected from surveys, focus groups, and interviews to understand various dimensions of human wellbeing, including work and health, with a special focus on rural people and places.
Accomplishments
Fred Buttel Outstanding Scholarly Achievement Award, Rural Sociological Society
2025
LSU Distinguished Faculty Award
2022
Education
Penn State University
Ph.D.
Rural Sociology
2004
Penn State University
M.S.
Rural Sociology and Demography
2000
University of Wisconsin-Madison,
B.S.
Rural Sociology
1998
Affiliations
- Population Association of America (PAA)
- Rural Population Research Network (RPRN)
- Rural Sociological Society (RSS)
- Scholar Strategy Network (SSN)
- Southern Demographic Association (SDA)
Answers
- What will rural communities look like when the family farm becomes rare, but food production is more high-tech than ever?
This is a complicated story.In some respects, family farms remain the dominant farm type in the United States. For example, the USDA defines family farms as “any farm organized as a sole proprietorship, partnership, or family corporation. Family farms exclude farms organized as nonfamily corporations or cooperatives, as well as farms with hired managers.” By this definition, over 95 percent of the nation’s 2.2 million farms are family farms.But for many decades the trend in agriculture has been increasing consolidation toward a smaller number of large farms with greater productive capacity. According to the USDA, of the 2.2 million family farms, fewer than 200,000 large operations produce over 60 percent of all domestic food and fiber products sold. These are family farms, but they are also large, technology-intensive, sophisticated businesses.On the other hand, that idea that contemporary rural life is synonymous with agriculture is a myth and misunderstanding. The shift from many smaller farms to fewer larger farms means most rural Americans don’t have direct economic ties to agriculture anymore. Direct farm employment accounts for just over 1% of total U.S. employment and represents a minority of jobs even in the most sparsely populated counties in the country. The service and manufacturing sectors are the dominant jobs sectors in rural America today. Job losses in American manufacturing have been especially painful in many rural and small-town places. It is one thing for a plant to shut down in large diversified city, but quite another when it is the lone “good jobs” employer in town.
- How did Hurricane Katrina change the rural landscape of Louisiana?
Here’s what we know. While much of the media attention to Hurricane Katrina was focused on New Orleans—and not without reason, there was immense destruction and human suffering in the city—the story there was one of technological and infrastructural failure, like levee system breaches and overwhelmed pump systems. However, many of the places that took a direct hit from Katrina were rural and small-town communities along the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast, places like Buras, Louisiana, and Pearlington, Mississippi, communities with fewer than 2,000 residents. In general, rural and small-town areas have less infrastructure and government capacity than cities do, exacerbating social vulnerability in that respect. More broadly, if you think about the land loss crisis in coastal Louisiana, most of the communities on the frontline are rural and small-town places, in parishes like Plaquemines, Lafourche, and Terrebonne. Barrier islands and marshes that used to function as “speed bumps” for storms are increasingly disappearing. This makes these communities more vulnerable to storms, as evidenced recently by the tremendous damage wrought by Hurricane Ida in 2021.One of the cumulative results of all these storms is the current property insurance crisis in South Louisiana. Low and moderate income folks increasingly can’t keep up with the rising cost of living on the coast. Older fixed income people not being able to insure their homes and younger people not being able to afford insurance to secure a mortgage sets the stage for depopulation absent innovative interventions.
Media Appearances
Rural Health Resilience: A Four-Part Series On Healing The Other America
Forbes online
2025-07-15
These older adults are often managing multiple chronic illnesses without access to home-based care, nearby pharmacies, or geriatric specialists. As Dr. Tim Slack of Louisiana State University puts it: “What we’re seeing is a slow erosion of the systems that support health—economic, medical, and civic."
Rural Americans Are More Likely to Participate in the Informal Economy, Study Shows
The Daily Yonder online
2025-06-11
Rural Americans are more likely to participate in the informal economy compared to their urban counterparts, according to a 2019 study published in Rural and Small-Town America, a new book written by rural sociologists Tim Slack and Shannon M. Monnat.
“People have been paying attention to rising economic precarity for a growing portion of people,” said Slack, who is a professor of sociology at Louisiana State University. “A lot of people are looking for compliments or substitutes for formal sector opportunities.”
Donald Trump's Approval Rating Collapses With Rural Americans
Newsweek online
2025-05-02
Tim Slack, a sociology professor at LSU, told Newsweek that he is "not especially surprised by these results.
"Lower income and working class folks, who make up a greater share of the population in rural America, are really hurting right now. And they have been for years," he said, explaining that economic recovery after 2008 was "slow and uneven," and many areas were still struggling when COVID hit, driving up prices.
They Barter and Trade to Survive. How Will They Vote?
The New York Times online
2024-11-01
While there are no nationwide initiatives to accurately assess how many of the 46 million Americans living in rural areas participate in barter and informal trade, Tim Slack, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University, with the Pennsylvania State University professors Ann R. Tickamyer and Leif Jensen, published national-level estimates of informal work in 2022.
Aging and shrinking: 3 in 4 Louisiana parishes have seen more deaths than births recently
NOLA online
2023-07-20
From diminishing school districts to changing medical services, the effects of a shrinking, aging population are being felt throughout the state.
LSU demographer Tim Slack looked at births and deaths in each parish between 2020 and 2022 and found parishes across almost all corners of Louisiana failed to have enough babies to keep up with the people they lost to the cemetery.
A rural Delta town withers amid population loss. It represents a broader trend in Louisiana.
NOLA online
2021-12-29
The depopulation of Louisiana’s rural areas isn’t unique. Americans have been moving to more urbanized areas for decades, said Tim Slack, an LSU sociology professor who studies rural places. Along with the mechanization of agriculture, manufacturers that moved to rural America decades ago to take advantage of low-wage, nonunion workers have been closing up shop in recent years.
Guest column: 2020 Census is a critical exercise for Louisiana
The Advocate online
2020-02-06
In March and April, households across the U.S. will be contacted to participate in the 2020 Census. It is critical that every Louisianan be counted.
See which Baton Rouge-area parishes are gaining, losing population, per new census data
The Advocate online
2019-04-19
Tim Slack, an LSU sociology professor whose work focuses on demography, said the migration numbers "suggest a pretty big flood effect," but that the real reasons might not be known until results are in from the 2020 census.
"Is this some kind of … momentary disruption … that where we'll sort of come back to baseline? Or, have these people moved away," Slack asked. "Or into the neighboring parishes? Presumably if people are coming back, they'll be back by 2020."
Articles
Deepwater Horizon oil spill exposures and long-term self-rated health effects among parents in coastal Louisiana
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness2023
Purpose
To assess whether exposure to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DHOS) was related to parents’ self-rated health over time.
Design
3 waves of panel data were drawn from the Gulf Coast Population Impact study (2014) and Resilient Children, Youth, and Communities study (2016, 2018).
Setting
Coastal Louisiana communities in high-impact DHOS areas.
Disparate effects of BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill exposure on psychological resilience
Traumatology2022
A growing body of research has demonstrated links between exposure to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DHOS) and negative consequences for well-being in the impacted region. We contribute to this literature by investigating the relationship between exposure to the DHOS (ie, physical and economic) and subsequent perceptions of the ability to cope with adverse events (ie, psychological resilience) among adults with children. Doing so advances prior research by (a) providing a direct test of psychological resilience (ie, the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale) rather than relying on proxy measures and (b) improving on cross-sectional studies by using prospective cohort data to establish temporal ordering between spill exposure and psychological resilience.
Bidirectional longitudinal associations of parent and child health following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Population and Environment2022
This study (1) assessed whether parent health mediated associations between exposures to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (BP-DHOS) and child health, and whether child health mediated associations between BP-DHOS exposures and parent health; and (2) assessed bidirectional longitudinal associations between parent health and child health following the BP-DHOS. The study used three waves of panel data (2014, 2016, and 2018) from South Louisiana communities highly impacted by the BP-DHOS. Parents with children (aged 4–18 at the time of the interview) were interviewed based on a probability sample of households.
Parental education and child physical health following the BP deepwater horizon oil spill
American Journal of Health Promotion2022
Purpose
To assess whether trajectories of children’s physical health problems differ by parental college degree attainment in Louisiana areas highly impacted by the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (BP-DHOS).
Design
Three waves of panel data (2014, 2016, and 2018) from the Gulf Coast Population Impact / Resilient Children, Youth, and Communities studies.
Setting
BP-DHOS-impacted communities in coastal Louisiana.
Race, Residence, and Underemployment: Fifty Years in Comparative Perspective, 1968–2017†
Rural Sociology2020
High underemployment has been a chronic structural feature of the rural United States for decades. In this paper, we assess whether and how inequalities in underemployment between metropolitan (metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas have changed over the course of the last five decades. Drawing on data from the March Current Population Survey from 1968 to 2017, we analyze inequality in the prevalence of underemployment between metro and nonmetro areas of the United States, paying special attention to differences between white, black, and Hispanic workers.
Rural-urban variation in informal work activities in the United States☆
Journal of Rural Studies2019
Using a unique national-level household survey of informal labor in the United States, this paper examines the extent that rural versus urban residence influences the types and forms of participation in informal work activities. The informal economy consists of work activities that generate income or reduce expenditures outside the scope of state regulation in contexts where these activities otherwise would be regulated. Often associated with developing and transition economies, past research using both qualitative and quantitative methods demonstrate its prevalence in industrial and postindustrial economies. In the U.S., most of this research is geographically constrained or limited to specific subpopulations and sectors. Our analysis employs descriptive and multivariate techniques to analyze a national-level household survey on informal economic activity to explore rural-urban variation in the prevalence, forms, importance and correlates of participation in the informal economy.
Event Appearances
Population Health in Rural America: Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities
2025 | Invited presentation for the Aspen Institute Health Strategy Group Aspen, CO
Rural and Small-Town America: Myths and Misunderstandings
2025 | Invited presentation for the Slesinger Lecture at the University of Wisconsin Madison, WI
Key Demographic Trends and Labor Force Issues in Rural America
2024 | Invited presentation at the U.S. Government Accountability Office on behalf of the Population Association of America Washington, DC
Using Dynamic Web-Based Mapping for Community Benefits Plans: An Application in Louisiana
2024 | Annual Meeting of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics Baton Rouge, LA
Rural and Small-Town America: Context, Composition, and Complexities
2024 | Annual Meeting of the Rural Population Research Network Kansas City, MO
Food Security at the Intersection of Ethnoracial Identity and Family Structure, 2017–2019
2024 | Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association Montreal, Canada
Land Loss in Coastal Louisiana: A Rural-Urban Population Interface Issue
2022 | Invited presentation at Population Matters: Demography and Wellbeing in Rural America, a policy symposium sponsored by the Rural Population Research Network and hosted by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities Washington, DC
Research Grants
Equitable Resilience Assessment in a Changing Climate: A System-of-Systems Approach
Louisiana State University, Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Research
2024–2025
“Pelican Gulf Coast Carbon Removal
U.S. Department of Energy
2024–2025
Extreme Weather Events, Changing Communities, and Rural-Urban Disparities in Cardiovascular Health among Aging Adults
INRPHA & NIH National Institute on Aging
2022-2023
Media
