From the Daily Yonder

Urban Shift: Population Lagging in Rural Counties, Study Shows

By Robert Gallardo, The Daily Yonder, Guest Writer, 7-23-10

	This map shows all rural counties in the U.S. and whether they gained or lost population from 2000 to 2009. Courtesy of the Daily Yonder.

What’s happened to rural America during the last decade?

Over the next few weeks, the Daily Yonder is trying to answer this question as it looks at changes in population, ethnicity, age groups and education.

First, population. The nation’s total population increased 9.1 percent between 2000 and 2009, a total of 25.5 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Population increases in rural counties lagged, however. The population of the nation’s 2,038 rural counties increased by just 2.9 percent in the decade.

Population in exurban counties had the highest percentage increase in the 2000s, up 13.1 percent. Urban counties increased 10.1 percent, just above the national average.

What’s clear from the data: Population change in rural America during this decade has varied by region. See a larger version of the accompanying map here.

The rural Midwest largely lost population during the decade. These predominantly agricultural counties may be losing people because agriculture is increasingly mechanized — and other jobs are not there to attract or retain residents.

Meanwhile, however, almost every rural county in Washington state gained population. In fact, the entire Mountain West gained residents in the 2000s.

By the end of the decade, however, the United States had grown less rural. In 2000, 17.3 percent of the nation’s population lived in rural counties, which decreased to 16.4 percent just nine years later.

Meanwhile, the country grew increasingly urban. By 2009, three out of every four Americans lived in an urban county.

Whites continue to be a majority in urban, rural and exurban counties — but their share of the population has decreased across the board between 2000 and 2009.

The largest decrease in white population took place in urban counties, but both exurban and rural counties had a decline in the proportion of their white populations, too.

Where are whites going? There is surely movement between counties, but overall, white Americans are simply not keeping up with either immigrant groups or faster-reproducing populations. Again, though, that is less true in rural counties than in the cities.

Blacks (non-Hispanic) gained shares of population, particularly in exurban counties. The smallest increase in black population in the 2000s took place in rural counties.

Large portions of the southeast U.S. (including East Texas) saw a decrease in their share of black residents. This may be because these regions had a high percentage of black residents to begin with. The share of black population in these counties is still high compared to the rest of the nation.

Blacks living in rural areas of the southeast could also be moving to the cities within the same region. This map below shows the change in the share of blacks in rural counties from 2000 to 2009.

Hispanics gained in rural, urban and exurban counties during the 2000s, but more in urban counties than in rural. The data show almost a fifth of the urban population is now Hispanic.

Hispanics increased their share of the population in almost every rural county.

It’s interesting that in some of the few counties where the share of whites increased — mostly counties in New Mexico and Texas — were also the counties where the share of Hispanics decreased. See this map for details.

Finally, here are the 50 rural counties that had the largest increase in total population between 2000 and 2009.

Among the top five are Teton County, Idaho, and Sublette County, Wyo.

Roberto Gallardo is research associate at the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University.

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