The local high school Christmas Concert was this week.  It was packed.  Hours of practice by the students, hours of extracurricular energy from teachers and staff, mountains of volunteer hours from students and parents, and 90 minutes direct joy from student parents, grandparents, cousins, and siblings.  Grit, Joy, and community engagement.  Those are the benefits.

These benefits are authentic, highly valued, and are economically efficient, but do not have a monetary value.  If a tree falls in the forest, does it make any sound?  If there is no monetized value, is it really supply and demand?  YES, IT IS!

Teaching undergraduate economics in a rural community it became apparent that many attributes of rural areas do not show up in our standard economics textbook.  Previous posts have set the framework or context for these difficult-to-monetize community aspects.

• Local must be defined as including both local supply and local demand.  Bioenergy Success Depends on Local Markets that ‘Are in the Neighborhood’.
• Vibrant rural communities are powered by volunteer hours.  The Power of Community Energy in Creating Rural Wealth.
• Microeconomic and macroeconomic theories converge together in rural communities.  It takes both/and private market success and efficient public policy.  The budget deficits of those two established forces gets carried by volunteer hours.  Community Wealth Creation Reflects Both Micro and Macroeconomics.

There are many costs.  Most community groups cannot pay employees, so folks volunteer.  That is fairly intuitive.  There is a cultural rural stereo type of potluck dinners, clubs, church groups, fairs.  It is the rural way.

The traditional ‘Way’ is not sufficient. Economic theory states that there must be benefits.  Benefits confer value.  Value implies a measurable dollar value.  But in rural areas most of the events, dinners, and fundraisers have no dollar benefit.  But there are demands and those things demanded are supplied, often locally.

Some of the fundamental rural wealth metrics are introduced in the 2012, USDA, Economic Research Service, Rural Wealth Creation: Concepts, Strategies, and Measures, report.  This report describes 8 kinds of community capital: physical, financial, human, intellectual, natural, social, political, and cultural capital.  The most difficult to monetize are social, political, and cultural capital.

Validation. Some of the benefits are rewarding the students for their extracurricular effort to excel.  It is a tremendous lesson to practice, risk, and deliver, and to be acknowledged for a job well done.  About 80 students participated in either the choral performance, the orchestral performance, or both.  Often times the result of years of practice.

Information Exchange. Communities have been gathering to exchange information for centuries, long before social media.  Local student music and athletic events at schools, churches, and independent organizations were the model for social media.  In supporting the students, colleagues, competitors, and other social/political/familial networks function and grow.

Business Recognition.  As mentioned in the The Junior Livestock Sale – a Secret Life of Rural Communities post, local businesses enjoy out bidding each other for recognition.  The high school music director was intentional at thanking the local groups and businesses that donated funds for new instruments.

The establishment of activities for young folks to engage in life is priceless.  Without the energy to provide engagement activities for youth and jobs for working people, communities begin to atrophy.  Jobs and workers migrate to more densely populated areas to find engagement and security.

Just like traditional economics, community costs and benefits are still working even without dollar values.  As I enjoyed and supported (my benefit) the high school students the other night enjoying the fruits of their labors, I marveled at how closely economic theory fits community engagement even without discrete dollar values.

Who are these people?  They are us.