Rural U.S. Disappearing? Population Share Hits low
Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the U.S. population, the lowest ever.
The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by mid-century, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, demographers say.
More metro areas are booming into sprawling megalopolises. Barring fresh investment that could bring jobs, however, large swaths of the Great Plains in the central U.S. and Appalachia in the East, along with parts of the South and Texas, could face significant population declines.
These places posted some of the biggest losses over the past decade as young adults left and the people who stayed got older, moving past childbearing years.
For instance in the state of West Virginia, now with a median age of 41.3, the share of Americans 65 and older is now nearly double that of young adults 18-24 — 16 percent compared to 9 percent, according to census figures released Thursday. In 1970, the shares of the two groups were roughly equal at 12 percent.
"Some of the most isolated rural areas face a major uphill battle, with a broad area of the country emptying out," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau, a research group in Washington, D.C. "Many rural areas can't attract workers because there aren't any jobs, and businesses won't relocate there because there aren't enough qualified workers. So they are caught in a downward spiral."
Rural towns are scrambling to attract new residents and stave off heavy funding cuts from financially strapped federal and state governments.
Delta Air Lines recently announced it would end flight service to 24 small airports, several of them in the Great Plains, and the U.S. Postal Service is mulling plans to close thousands of branches in mostly rural areas of the country. The University of Kansas this month opened a new medical school with a class of eight in Salina, a regional hub of nearly 50,000 people, in hopes of supporting nearby rural communities that have no doctors at all.
In North Dakota, colleges are seeking to draw in young adults by charging low tuition and fees. It's part of a broader trend in which many slow-growing rural states are touting recreational scenic landscapes or extending tuition breaks to out-of-state residents who typically are charged more.
Many rural areas, the central Great Plains in particular, have been steadily losing population since the 1930s with few signs of the trend slowing in coming decades, according to census figures.
The share of people in rural areas over the past decade fell to 16 percent, passing the previous low of 20 percent in 2000. The rural share is expected to drop further as the U.S. population balloons from 309 million to 400 million by mid-century, leading people to crowd cities and suburbs and fill in the open spaces around them.
In 1910, the population share of rural America was 72 percent. Such areas remained home to a majority of Americans until 1950, amid post-World War II economic expansion and the baby boom.
Among the struggling rural areas are vast stretches of West Virginia in Appalachia. Several of the state's counties over the past decade have lost large chunks of their population following the collapse of logging and coal-mining industries during the 1960s.
The numbers are based partly on an analysis by the Population Reference Bureau. The data were supplemented with calculations by Robert Lang, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. "Rural" is generally defined as nonmetropolitan areas with fewer than 50,000 people.
While rural America shrinks, larger U.S. metro areas have enjoyed double-digit percentage gains in population over the past several decades. Since 2000, metros grew overall by 11 percent with the biggest gains in suburbs or small- or medium-sized cities. In fact, of the 10 fastest-growing places, all were small cities incorporated into the suburbs of expanding metro areas, mostly in California, Arizona and Texas.
In all, the share of Americans living in suburbs has climbed to an all-time high of 51 percent. Despite sharp declines in big cities in the Northeast and Midwest since 2000 due to the recession, U.S. cities increased their share by 3 percentage points to 33 percent.
"These new patterns suggest that there will be a blurring of boundaries as regions expand well beyond official government-defined definitions," Frey said. "People like to 'have it all' — affordable housing in a smaller-town setting but in close proximity to jobs and big-city amenities such as specialized shopping, cultural events and major sports and entertainment venues."
Source: Associated Press
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