Population Change and Income Inequality in Rural America
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Population Change and Income Inequality in Rural America Jaclyn Butler1 · Grace A. Wildermuth1 · Brian C. Thiede1 · David L. Brown2 Received: 18 January 2020 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This paper examines the effects of population growth and decline on county-level income inequality in the rural United States from 1980 to 2016. Findings from previous research have shown that population growth is positively associated with income inequality. However, these studies are largely motivated by theories of urbanization and growth in metropolitan areas and do not explicitly test for differences between the impacts of population growth and decline. Examining the effects of both forms of population change on income inequality is particularly important in rural areas of the United States, the majority of which are experiencing population decline. We analyze county-level data (N = 11,320 county-decades) from the U.S. Decennial Census and American Community Survey, applying fixed effects regression models to estimate the respective effects of population growth and decline on income inequality within rural counties. We find that both forms of population change have significant effects on income inequality relative to stable growth. Population decline is associated with increases in income inequality, while population growth is marginally associated with decreases in inequality. These relationships are consistent across a variety of model specifications, including models that account for counties’ employment, sociodemographic, and ethno-racial composition. We also find that the relationship between income inequality and population change varies by counties’ geographic region, baseline level of inequality, and baseline population size, suggesting that the links between population change and income inequality are not uniform across rural America. Keywords Income inequality · Population decline · Rural United States · Spatial inequality Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11113-02009606-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jaclyn Butler [email protected] 1
Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA
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Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
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Introduction The contemporary United States is characterized by exceptionally high levels of income inequality relative to historical standards and to other high-income countries (OECD 2017; Saez 2017; VanHeuvelen 2018). The level of income inequality varies greatly across localities, including between rural and urban areas1. Since 1970, nonmetropolitan counties have tended to have much higher average levels of income inequality than metropolitan counties (Moller et al. 2009; Thiede et al. 2019). Although growth in urban inequality has led to significant rural–urban convergence in countylevel income inequalit
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