Wal-Mart and Rural Communities

Walmartwatch.com has a lot of resources, publications and research relevant to Wal-Mart and the issues we've been discussing. One of the reports that I thought was particularly interesting is here, and involves research that was conducted by the Farm Foundation to determine Wal-Mart's impact on the retail areas of rural communities. The study used 34 towns in Iowa where Wal-Mart has had stores for 10 years or more, and found that many of the towns lost between 34-47% of their retail trade after 10 years of Wal-Mart being in business in the towns.