[Agriculture Fact Book 98]

Nonmetropolitan Population

Today, the United States is primarily metropolitan. People who live in large cities and their suburbs account for 80 percent of the total population. Nonmetropolitan people outside large cities and submetro counties numbered about 54.3 million in 1997. Although nonmetro population continues to increase, its proportion of the total population has fallen slightly over the last several decades because the metro population grew even more rapidly.

A metro area, by definition, must have an urban nucleus of a least 50,000 people, and may include fringe counties that are linked to that nucleus because their workers commute to the central area. All other counties are nonmetro.

After 1970, most nonmetro counties that were losing population in the 1960's began to grow again because of job development, commuting, or the development of retirement communities that drew retirees in from other areas. However, after 1980, low farm income and a slump in mining and manufacturing employment led to a slow but widespread decline in nonmetro population, generally in the same areas that declined before 1970. Some nonmetro counties, though, grew enough as retirement or recreation areas, or from their proximity to metro jobs, to produce overall nonmetro population growth during the decade.

Since 1990, there is evidence once again of increased retention of people in nonmetro areas. From 1990 to 1996, the population of nonmetro counties grew at an annual pace more than double that of the 1980's, with far fewer counties declining. This change has affected all types of counties and most regions of the country. Improvement in nonmetro economic conditions is thought to be generally responsible for this change. But, recreation and retirement counties continue to be the most rapidly developing group. Declining population is still characteristic of areas that are dependent on farming, three-fourths of which have continued to have more people moving out than in.

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