Metropolitan Reclassification and the Urbanization of Rural America
- PDF / 912,574 Bytes
- 22 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 14 Downloads / 195 Views
Metropolitan Reclassification and the Urbanization of Rural America Kenneth M. Johnson 1 & Daniel T. Lichter 2 # Population Association of America 2020
Abstract We highlight the paradoxical implications of decadal reclassification of U.S. counties (and America’s population) from nonmetropolitan to metropolitan status between 1960 and 2017. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we show that the reclassification of U.S. counties has been a significant engine of metropolitan growth and nonmetropolitan decline. Over the study period, 753—or nearly 25% of all nonmetropolitan counties—were redefined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as metropolitan, shifting nearly 70 million residents from nonmetropolitan to metropolitan America by 2017. All the growth since 1970 in the metropolitan share of the U.S. population came from reclassification rather than endogenous growth in existing metropolitan areas. Reclassification of nonmetropolitan counties also had implications for drawing appropriate inferences about rural poverty, population aging, education, and economic growth. The paradox is that these many nonmetropolitan “winners”—those experiencing population and economic growth—have, over successive decades, left behind many nonmetropolitan counties with limited prospects for growth. Our study provides cautionary lessons regarding the commonplace narrative of widespread rural decline and economic malaise but also highlights the interdependent demographic fates of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. Keywords Population growth . Rural . Nonmetropolitan . Urbanization . Depopulation
* Kenneth M. Johnson [email protected]
1
Department of Sociology and Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire, 345B McConnell Hall, 15 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, USA
2
Department of Policy Management and Analysis and Cornell Population Center, Cornell University, MVR 3226, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
K.M. Johnson, D.T. Lichter
Introduction Urbanization has continued apace in the United States (Gibson 2010). Indeed, growth of the nation’s metropolitan population—its absolute size and percentage share—has accelerated over the past century (Johnson and Lichter 2019).1 Today, the growing influence of metropolitan America is evident in national political debates and governance, cultural values and mass opinion, and regional and community investments and innovation (Lichter and Brown 2011). Some rural areas, of course, continue to grow and prosper, but others have been relegated to the demographic, economic, and political sidelines. America’s small towns and thinly settled rural areas, especially in Appalachia, the Great Plains, and the Delta, have faced protracted economic difficulties— poverty, diminished employment, job instability, and stagnant wage growth—as well as population decline over the past several decades. A new “geography of despair” is now expressed in increasingly concentrated rural poverty rates and declining life expectancy caused by rising midlife mortality from suicides and drug overdos
Data Loading...
