[Agriculture Fact Book 98]
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.
Age distributions reflect past demographic events (births, deaths, and migrations) and provide important clues about future changes in the labor supply and the demand for goods and services. The age distribution of the U.S. population is still dominated by the post-World War II rise in fertility rates known as the baby boom, whose members were born in 1946-64. From the time the youngest “baby boomers” graduated from high school and began their entry into the labor force in 1982 until the oldest members reach 65 in 2011, the United States has had and will continue to have a favorable balance of people in income-producing age groups. All parts of the country benefit from the current age structure.
Because of migration, which consists primarily of young adults and their children, metro areas captured a much higher percentage of the baby boomers. The higher metro percentage of working-age adults has been a persistent pattern for most of this century. Metro/nonmetro differences among the youngest and oldest have become increasingly large. In a reversal of previous trends, the birth rates in metro areas in the last 5 years have been greater than in nonmetro areas. In large measure, this reversal is due to the delayed childbearing among women in the large metro baby boom segment. Birth rates for nonmetro women are higher at younger ages, particularly for women in their twenties, an age group not well represented in nonmetro areas.
Increases in life expectancy over the past 50 years and the aging of the large population segment born in the 1920's increased the proportion of elderly between 1970 and 1997. The percentage of the population over age 75 rose dramatically, especially in nonmetro areas. Retirement migration to nonmetro areas, coupled with historically high levels of nonmetro outmigration of young adults and their children, placed a higher proportion of older people in nonmetro areas: the percentage of nonmetro population age 65 or older was 15 percent in 1997, compared with 12 percent in metro areas. For the first time since 1960, children under 10 outnumber preteens and teenagers in metro areas. This is not true for nonmetro areas.
In 1990, 8.7 million nonmetro residents belonged to one of four minority groups, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians (including Pacific Islanders), and Native Americans. Blacks made up close to two-thirds of the nonmetro minority population in 1980, but their share declined as other groups grew much faster during the 1980's. Minorities constituted only 14 percent of the total nonmetro population in 1980, but they accounted for 50 percent of the people added during the 1980's. Their 15 percent rate of growth was more than five times the rate for Whites. For all minorities except Native Americans, however, growth rates were even higher in metro areas during the 1980's, so that the share of U.S. minorities living in nonmetro areas declined slightly from 16 to 14 percent. Minorities are still much more likely than Whites to live in metro areas, but their presence in nonmetro areas is increasing.
Nonmetro areas gained jobs at a rate comparable to that of metro areas during the 1970's, but fell far behind metro growth during the 1980's. Nonmetro areas suffered more in the two recessions of the early 1980's and benefited less from the 1982-89 recovery than did metro areas. As a result, employment growth was considerably slower in nonmetro (1.3 percent annually) than in metro areas (2.5 percent annually) during 1979-89. More encouraging is the most recent performance of rural areas. In contrast to the 1980's trend, rural areas weathered the 1990-91 recession better than metro areas did. In nonmetro areas, total jobs grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate during 1989-95; in metro areas, jobs grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate. Most of the nonmetro growth was in services-producing industries (1.8 million out of 2.4 million new jobs). Goods- producing industries contributed 312,000 new nonmetro jobs while 616,000 goods-producing jobs were lost by metro areas.
The number of rural services-producing jobs grew faster during the 1970's (3 percent annually) than during the 1980's (2.1 percent annually) and the early 1990's (2.4 percent annually). Among the services-producing industries, general services--such as hotel accommodations, hair cuts, car repair, and entertainment--provided the largest number of new rural jobs (1 million) during 1989-95. Nonmetro retail trade firms added 621,000 new jobs, growing slightly faster (2.5 percent annually) than they had grown in the two previous decades (2.4 percent annually in the 1970's; 1.9 percent annually in the 1980's). In manufacturing, the largest goods-producing industry, nonmetro areas added jobs during 1989-95 while metro areas continued to lose jobs.
In 1997, 25.7 million people 16 years old and older were in the nonmetropolitan work force, either at work or looking for work. On average, 1.3 million or 5.2 percent of these workers were unemployed during the year. Unemployment rates are particularly high among nonmetro minorities and teenagers. In 1997, 15.4 percent of teenagers, 11.6 percent of Blacks, and 8.5 percent of Hispanics in nonmetro areas were unemployed. The official unemployment rate excludes those jobless people not actively seeking work, but who indicate they want or are available for work (marginally attached workers), and part-time workers who want full-time jobs. The nonmetro adjusted unemployment rate, which includes marginally attached workers and involuntary part-time workers, was 9.5 percent.
Nonmetro unemployment fell from 7.2 percent in 1992 to 5.2 percent in 1997, as rural areas participated in the continuing national economic expansion; the 1997 rate was the lowest in 23 years. During the 1980's, unemployment rates were consistently higher in nonmetro areas than in metro. Although the nonmetro rate dipped below the metro rate for a few years after the 1990-91 recession, metro and nonmetro unemployment rates were similar in 1997 (4.9 and 5.2 percent, respectively). The nonmetro adjusted unemployment rate has remained higher than the metro rate throughout the 1990's. In 1997, the nonmetro unadjusted rate of 9.5 percent was somewhat above the 8.7 percent metro rate.
Nonmetro earnings failed to keep pace with inflation during the 1980's. The inflation- adjusted, average nonmetro weekly earnings for wage and salary workers fell 12.6 percent between 1979 and 1990, from $483 to $422 (1997 dollars). Average metro weekly earnings fell a smaller 1.4 percent between 1979 and 1990. As a result, the metro/nonmetro average weekly earnings gap grew by 73.6 percent, increasing from $72 to $125 (1997 dollars). From 1990 to 1997, however, nonmetro weekly earnings increased 3.3 percent, to $436 (1997 dollars), while metro earnings were nearly unchanged, rising only 0.5 percent. About one-fifth of the widening of the metro/nonmetro earnings gap that occurred in the 1980's closed after 1990.
Nonmetropolitan median household income, registering $28,089 in 1996, remained unchanged from 1995 to 1996 when adjusted for inflation. The median income of metropolitan households increased 1.3 percent to $37,640, widening the income gap between nonmetro and metro households. Nonmetro household income lagged behind metro household income by 25.4 percent in 1996. Median household incomes also reflect the economic disadvantage of nonmetro minorities, families headed by women, and women living alone (table 4-6).
The poverty rate in nonmetro America stood at 15.9 percent in 1996, essentially unchanged from the previous year, and higher than the metro poverty rate of 13.2 percent. The nonmetro poverty rate has been quite stable over the last 8 years, remaining within a range of 1.6 percent (figure 4-2). The nonmetro-metro poverty gap, at 2.7 percentage points, widened for the second consecutive year. Over half of the nonmetro poor (52 percent) live in the South, a disproportionate concentration compared with the South's 44 percent of the total nonmetro population.
Nonmetro poverty rates continued to be higher than metro poverty rates across demographic groups (figure 4-3). Families headed by women experienced the highest poverty rates of all family types (41.1 percent in nonmetro areas and 34.4 percent in metro), and a high proportion of nonmetro women living alone were also poor (30.4 percent). Over one-fifth of nonmetro children lived in poor families.
The poverty rates among nonmetro minorities were much higher than those of nonmetro Whites and substantially higher than those of metro minorities. The poverty rate was highest for nonmetro Blacks (35.2 percent), followed by nonmetro Native Americans (33.7 percent) and nonmetro Hispanics (33.4 percent). Despite the higher incidence of poverty among nonmetro minorities, almost two-thirds of the nonmetro poor were non-Hispanic Whites, because of the large White majority in the nonmetro population. Over the past 10 years, the Hispanic share of the nonmetro poor has nearly doubled, growing from 5.8 percent in 1986 to 11.1 percent in 1996.
Rural local governments face special problems in providing services for their citizens. The following are rural characteristics that affect how rural local governments provide services:
Isolated rural communities often suffer from medical services and facilities that are of lower quality than those found in metro areas. Even if medical care services were evenly distributed across the Nation, and were of equal quality, it is likely that nonmetro residents with chronically low incomes would still have serious difficulty receiving adequate care in a complex medical system where access is based mainly on the ability to pay.
Because many rural communities are small and isolated, and lack financial resources and trained personnel, similar problems are encountered in the provision of other rural public services. Various approaches have been taken to deal with these problems:
Although most rural community residents do not enjoy the same level of public services available to urban area residents, much progress has been made in improving some rural services over the last 30 years. Rising incomes and increased aid from higher level governments have made possible more and better programs for rural governments.
The management capacity of rural governments to plan and carry out these programs has improved. For example, in the 1960's and 1970's a nationwide system of multicounty substate regional agencies was developed to help rural communities plan for and manage their new population growth.
Still, the institutional base of rural governments is more fragile than that of urban areas, and these isolated governments remain more vulnerable to external changes than do metropolitan governments.
In FY 1996, Federal funds reaching nonmetro counties averaged $4,523 per person, while metro counties averaged $5,243 per person (table 4-7). However, significant regional differences exist. The nonmetro Midwest received the least amount of Federal funds, $4,241 per person, while the nonmetro Northeast and South received slightly higher amounts per person. The nonmetro West received the highest amount of Federal funds, $4,811 per person (table 4-8).
Federal funding includes grants, loans, and other payments to support agriculture, forest management, housing, transportation, education, health, public assistance, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, defense, energy, and so on. Figures on the metro-nonmetro distribution of funds are based on the share of Federal funds that can be reliably traced to county levels. Interest on the national debt has been excluded for analytic purposes.
Nonmetro counties received a large share of their funds from income security programs, especially retirement and disability programs. About 43 percent of nonmetro funds were for such programs, compared with 32 percent of the metro funds. The nonmetro West received the highest amounts of per capita loans, salary and wages, and procurement contracts. However, the nonmetro West received only about 38 percent of its Federal funds per person for retirement and disability programs, compared to about 42 percent for the nonmetro Northeast, 44 percent for the nonmetro South, and 45 percent for the nonmetro Midwest.
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