Population Redistribution
Makes Defining Rural America Increasingly Difficult
Throughout the Nation, places that are unambiguously
rural or urban in character can be easily identified.
The island of Manhattan in New York City and Loving County,
Texas (population 84), unquestionably fall at opposite
ends of the rural-urban continuum. In between lie a growing
number of places not easily characterized as entirely
one or the other, largely because of two conditions:
- Suburbanization continues to extend the
economic influence of large cities and to blur urban
and rural landscapes along their periphery.
- The redistribution of population and services
from smaller towns and villages to larger towns and
regional centers makes long-established population thresholds
dividing rural and urban places, such as the 2,500 population
threshold, less relevant.
Most ERS studies of rural conditions and trends, including
this briefing room, refer to conditions in nonmetropolitan
areas. The definition of metropolitan (metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas is based on counties. Counties are
typically active political jurisdictions, have stable
borders, and usually have programmatic importance at the
Federal and State level. More importantly, estimates of
county population, employment, and income are available
annually. Also, individual and household characteristics,
such as age, race, education, migration, and poverty status,
are estimated annually for nonmetro areas by State. Data
for alternative rural definitions are more limited in
scope.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines metro
areas as (1) central (or core) counties with one or more urbanized
areas with 50,000 people or more, and (2) outlying counties
that are economically tied to the core counties, as measured
by the share of employed population that commutes to core counties to work. Nonmetro counties are outside the boundaries
of metro areas. Thus, as early as the 1970s, ERS and other
rural researchers and policy planners adopted a definition
of rural that includes, roughly, all places and people
living outside the primary daily commuting zone of cities of 50,000
people or more.
This concept differs substantially from the official
"rural" definition of the Census Bureau. Under that definition, rural areas comprise open country and settlements
with fewer than 2,500 residents, essentially all people
and places living outside densely settled territory as
it might appear from the air. Most counties, whether metropolitan
or nonmetropolitan, contain a combination of urban and
rural populations.
Rural and nonmetro populations have always been geographically
distinct to some degree, but the extent of overlap has
receded considerably over time. Today, millions of open
country and village residents who live within the borders
of metro counties and who are rural by the Census definition
are excluded from research and policy making that focuses
exclusively on nonmetro counties. Therefore, although
the word "rural" is commonly substituted for
"nonmetro" in speech and writing, it is becoming
increasingly misleading in regard to the official Census
definition.
Many counties with sizable rural populations became metro
for the first time after the 2000 Census because of the following factors:
- The considerable increase in the number of metro
fringe counties that accompanied liberalization of the
procedure for defining metro areas in 2000.
- The continued national increase of intercounty job
commuting.
- The large national population growth in the 1990s
that led to more new cities reaching metro size (50,000
or more people in an urbanized area).
As a result, the Nation has now reached the point where,
for the first time, slightly more than half of its rural
residents live in metro areas—30.1 million in 2000,
or 50.8 percent. Close to 400 metro counties were primarily
or completely rural in population in 2000, accounting
for over a third of all metro counties.
Given their rurality, the population of these "rural
metro" counties is typically not large by metro
standards, averaging 33,000 people in 2000, but they
contained 13 million total residents. From 2000 to
2005, the rural metro counties grew by 7.4 percent,
well above the metro average and over three times the
nonmetro rate. Thus, although it is common to think
of most rural areas as slow growing or declining, this
particular group makes up the fastest growing segment
along the entire continuum from metro central cities
to rural, isolated settings.
d
In sum, the nonmetro classification provides a widely
accepted, practical, economically based definition of
rural. However, it excludes a growing number of open-country
and village residents who live in accessible proximity
to large cities and their suburbs. The "rural
metro" concept,
however, provides a useful territorial proxy for examining
such issues as land use and provision of water supply,
sewage disposal, electric and gas service, fire protection,
or access to public transportation.
For more details on classification differences, see
the what is
rural chapter in the Measuring Rurality Briefing
Room.
|
