New Carsey Institute Report Finds Four Distinct Rural Americas
By Beth Potier, Media Relations
July 23, 2008
From waving wheat fields to shuttered manufacturing plants... from the majestic
Rocky Mountains to the impoverished Mississippi River Delta ... rural America
is as varied and nuanced as the landscape it inhabits. A new report from the
Carsey Institute, based on a comprehensive survey of 8,000 Americans from 19
rural counties, identifies four distinct, often disparate, rural Americas.
The data-rich report presents a complex picture of the economics, demographics,
politics, and values of people in rural America.
The report, called “Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four
Rural Americas,” identifies four broad types of rural places:
- Amenity-rich areas that draw vacationers, retirees, and second home-owners
with their mountains, lakes, coastlines, or forests.
- Declining resource-dependent areas that once thrived on the agriculture,
timber, mining and manufacturing industries which, now threatened by globalization
and resource depletion, no longer support a vibrant middle class population.
- Chronically poor regions where residents and the land have suffered
decades of resource depletion and underinvestment.
- A transitional type characterized by amenity-driven growth and resource-based
decline. While traditional resource-based economies in these areas have weakened,
these transitional regions show potential for amenity-driven growth.
“Our findings indicate that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, ‘rural
America’ is changing, often dramatically, as economic, demographic and
environmental forces sweep across the country,” said Carsey Institute
Director Mil Duncan, who authored the report with Carsey senior fellow and
UNH professor of sociology Larry Hamilton, writer Leslie Hamilton, and Chris
Colocousis, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UNH.
The report surveyed residents from rural counties around the U.S.: Park and
Chafee counties in the amenity-rich Rocky Mountains of Colorado; Jewell, Osborne,
Republic and Smith counties in the declining heartland of Kansas; Harlan and
Lechter counties in Appalachian Kentucky; Coahoma, Tunica and Quitman counties
in the Mississippi Delta; Choctaw, Clarke, Marengo and Wilcox counties in the “Black
Belt” of Alabama; Clatsop County in Oregon and Pacific County in Washington,
both along the Pacific coast; and Coos County, New Hampshire, and Oxford County,
Maine, in the Northern Forest.
While some issues – the need for more jobs chief among them – transcended
these four regions, others created unique problems or opportunities to individual
regions. Among the key issues:
- Only 40 percent of respondents to the survey, called the Community
and Environment in Rural America (CERA) survey, say they work full time, well
below the national average of 53 percent.
- Populations in all but the amenity-rich regions are aging, as young
adults leave, older residents remain, and reproduction rates fall. Amenity-rich
areas, on the other hand, are attracting both retiring boomers and young professional
- The natural environment is a significant, although varied, force
on rural America, attracting residents to amenity-rich areas and leading to
their departure from declining areas where natural resources have been depleted
and economic shifts have diminished employment opportunities.
- Strong traditions of self-reliance and individualism remain in all
rural Americas; civic engagement is also strong, especially in the declining
Heartland. Political leanings and the role of religion in daily life vary among
the four areas.
- Concerns about community problems vary greatly among the four rural
Americas, with drugs and crime chief concerns in persistently poor places,
population decline worrisome in the declining-resource Heartland, and growth
and sprawl concerning residents of high-amenity areas.
“A one-size-fits-all approach to policymaking will not work, as each
of these regions struggles with its own place-specific issues and problems,” notes
Duncan. “Addressing the challenges in rural America requires an understanding
of the complex changes happening right now in these very different regions
in order to target their unique needs and opportunities.”
To download the complete report, go to http://carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/Report_PlaceMatters.pdf.
To watch a video of Mil Duncan describing the “four rural Americas” concept,
go to http://bbvideo.unh.edu/content/milduncan/lecture.wmv.