More folks take up rural living
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Americans are returning to the
country after 160 years of steady
urbanization.
In the last decade, the population
in rural areas and small towns
increased by 15 percent, while
metropolitan areas grew by only 9
percent.
The latest U.S. population census
showed that 62.8 million people
lived in nonmetropolitan areas in
1980—8.3 million more than in 1970.
At least 4 million of the newcomers
came from cities or from abroad.
“Much of the move to rural
areas also reflects a regional
shift,” says Calvin Beale, USDA
population analyst.
“Drawn primarily by jobs—but
also by the benefits-of rural and
for better or worse
small town life—several million
have left the cities and suburbs of
the northeast and mdustralized
midwest for the more rural
southern and western states. For
the first time, the country’s
population is centered west of the
Mississippi River,” he says.
This isn’t a sign that urban areas
are actually shrinking. Generally,
states with the highest growth
rates added people in both
metropolitan and rural areas. In
the south,'cities grew faster than
rural areas—the only region where
this was true.
Nationally, however, urban
populations not only grew at a
slower pace than rural areas.
Their pace also slowed con
siderably from the 17-percent
urban growth rate of the 1960’5.
In contrast, the growth rate of
rural areas accelerated, even
though total U.S. population
growth slowed down. In the 1960’5,
the nation’s rural population in
creased by only 4.4 percent despite
the higher birth rate because 2.8
million more people moved out of
rural areas than moved in.
Beale emphasizes while most
rural areas showed renewed
growth in the 1970’5, some grew at
fast rates, while others only lost
people at a slower rate than before.
A vast, thinly populated rural
area in the mountain west grew by
50 percent—easily the highest rate
in the country. On top of a higher
birth rate there, people came for
the jobs in the energy, mining, and
resort industries.
In addition, the trend toward
early retirement and unproved
pension benefits increased the
ranks of retired people, many of
whom chose to settle in the west.
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Florida's nonmetropolitan areas
gamed in population for the same
reason.
Predominantly rural counties
adjoining large urban areas also
showed rapid nonmetropolitan
growth, while the revival of coal
mining drew people back to the
coal regions ot Kentucky, West
Virginia, and Virginia after a
population decline there in the
1960’5.
Some counties showed a decline
in nonmetropolitan population
most of them in the Great Plains
and western Com Belt. There,
nonfarm growth wasn’t high
enough to balance the decline in
the farm population.
In the Mississippi delta region,
the continuing pattern of black
migration to the north and the
trend to mechanization con
tributed to a drop in population.
Only Rhode Island, though,
showed a statewide decline in the
rural population.
While these populations growth
figures signify real changes in
where people are choosing to live,
they can distort or mask more
specific population trends if read
too literally.
What’s happening in rural
counties adjoining large cities is a
good example.
Metropolitan areas are defined
as those having urban centers of at
least 50,000 people. Adjacent rural
counties are counted in these areas
if they have certain metropolitan
characteristics if growth, ur
banization, and population density,
and if 15 percent or more of the
workers communte to jobs in the
central county. More and more of
Hour* Mon thruH CAM to 7PM.
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