Understanding Rural America
Rural Diversity
Different challenges, different solutions.
Rural America is diverse in many ways. As we have seen, no one industry
dominates the rural economy, no single pattern of population decline or growth
exists for all rural areas, and no statement about improvements and gaps in
well-being holds true for all rural people.
Many of these differences are regional in nature. That is, rural areas
within a particular geographic region of the country often tend to be similar to
each other and different from areas in another region. Some industries, for
example, are associated with different regions logging and sawmills in the
Pacific Northwest and New England, manufacturing in the Southeast and Midwest,
and farming in the Great Plains. Persistent poverty also has a regional pattern,
concentrated primarily in the Southeast. Other differences follow no regional
pattern. Areas that rely heavily on the services industry are located throughout
rural America, as are rural areas that have little access to advanced
telecommunications services. Many of these differences--regional and nonregional--are the result of a combination of factors including the availability of natural
resources; distance from and access to major metropolitan areas and the
information and services found there; transportation and shipping facilities;
political history and structure; and the racial, ethnic, and cultural makeup of
the population.
The result: Rural areas differ in terms of their needs and the resources
they possess to address those needs.
To explain some of these differences, the rest of this report examines six
types of nonmetro counties. These types were chosen because of their importance
to the rural economy and/or rural development policy. Three of the county types--
farming counties, manufacturing counties, and services counties--are based on
economic specialization and are mutually exclusive. That is, the types are
defined by a county's economic dependence on a particular industry. The other
three types--retirement-destination counties, Federal lands counties, and
persistent poverty counties--are based on their special relevance to policy and
are not mutually exclusive. Population shifts and the use of natural resources,
ownership of land and its effects on rural people and communities, and the
issues associated with low-income people are all themes that merit special
attention.
For each county type, information is provided on income and employment and
other relevant socio-economic indicators. Each section also contains discussion
on what it means to people to live in a county of that type, with a special
focus on what the future might hold.
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Updated: February 10, 1997
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