The 3 Rural Americas

A cow stands in front of a barn painted with a U.S. flag
A barn painted with a U.S. flag in Homestead, Iowa Jim Young/Reuters

The 3 Rural Americas

  1. RICHARD FLORIDA
 JUN 1, 2018
Not all rural areas are declining: Some are thriving, while others are undergoing significant transitions.
The notion of a deep divide between thriving, affluent, and progressive urban areas and declining, impoverished, and conservative rural areas has become a central trope—if not the central trope—in American culture, especially since Donald Trump was elected. But not all of rural America is in decline. In fact, significant parts of it are thriving, while others have economies in transition. Understanding these distinctions is crucial to understanding the places that truly are in decline.
That’s the big takeaway from a new study by Jessica Ulrich-Schad (South Dakota State University) and Cynthia Duncan (Carsey School of Public Policy), published in the Journal of Peasant Studies. The authors draw on a rich set of data collected through surveys, interviews, and focus groups, as well as the more typically used datasets from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. All in all, between 2007 and 2011, they surveyed roughly 17,000 residents of rural communities in 38 counties and 12 states to gauge rural Americans’ perceptions of their communities, their local economies, and environmental issues and the future. They also drew on detailed in-person interviews with approximately 180 people.

Socioeconomic and demographic indicators for study counties, 2015, percentage of residents

Amenity-richTransitioningChronically poor
Population change, 1990-201519.310.6-13.7
Population change, ages 25-34, 1990-20151.2-18.3-30.6
Adults 16-64 working (full-time, year-round)41.142.636.0
Families with no workers (past 12 months)20.020.627.8
Working-age (16-64) men disability status16.615.722.5
No high-school degree (25+)8.99.421.5
Associate degree and above (25+)33.031.123.0
Median household income (in dollars)45,87651,50530,021
Single female family households8.49.717.3
Children (0-17) in poverty22.221.038.4
Non-Hispanic white83.483.562
(U.S. Census Bureau, 1990, 2015. Journal of Peasant Studies.)
Ultimately, the authors identify three very different types of rural community across the United States: chronically poor, transitioning, and amenity-rich.

Chronically poor rural areas

These are the rural areas we hear most about. From Michael Harrington’s influential 1962 book The Other America to J.D. Vance’s controversial Hillbilly Elegy, our common impression of rural America is that it is made up of economically depressed places that were hit hard by deindustrialization. Clustered in Appalachia and the rural South, these areas struggle with population and job loss, unemployment, low levels of educational attainment, high levels of poverty, and inter-generational economic hardship.  
Taken as a whole, this group of places lost nearly 14 percent of its population between 1990 and 2015, which is far worse than the 27-percent population gain of the nation as a whole. They lost young people at more than double that rate, their population of 25-to-34 year-olds plummeting by more than 30 percent between 1990 and 2015.
Their median income is far below that of the nation as a whole, $30,000 versus $54,000. Nearly a quarter of working-age men in these areas have a disability, more than twice the national share of 11 percent. Almost four in every 10 children in these places live in poverty, again, almost double the rate of the nation as a whole (20 percent). One in five adults does not have a high-school diploma.

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