The movement of better educated adults from rural areas to urban
areas has a longstanding history in America. Data from the 2000
Census, however, show a departure from this trend, as rural areas
held their own in the 1990s by attracting and keeping college graduates
to work and raise families. In the 1980s, the number of college
graduates grew about two-thirds faster in America’s central
cities and suburbs than in rural areas, but in the 1990s, rural
and urban counties enjoyed similar rates
of increase.
At the same time that rural America experienced robust growth
in college graduates, the number of rural high school dropouts
fell. As recently as 1980, there were six high school dropouts
for every two college graduates in rural areas; by 2000, the ratio
had improved to three to two. At the current rate of change, college-educated
adults will outnumber high school dropouts in rural areas within
a decade, and may reorient widespread perceptions about workforce
skill levels in rural versus urban areas.
Can we soon expect a plethora of college graduates in every corner
of rural America? No, the recent turnaround—the substantial
growth in the college-educated population—was not evenly
distributed across rural areas. In high-poverty areas in the rural
South and Southwest, low-wage resource-based and manufacturing
economies limit the kind of high-skill job growth that attracts
college graduates. The rural Mountain West, on the other hand,
experienced a 50-percent gain in college graduates, in large part
because graduates’ greater income and wealth and wider job
market networks enable them to settle more easily in highly desirable
areas, such as those rich in natural amenities.
It is probably too soon to tell whether the rapid increase in
rural college graduates in the 1990s is the beginning of a long-term
narrowing of the rural-urban gap in human resources. Other ERS
research found that rural population growth, particularly from
college graduates, was much higher during the first half of the
1990s. And, many rural areas will continue to fall short in
attracting highly educated workers. The recent improvement in rural educational
attainment, nonetheless, is good news in an economy increasingly geared toward
high-skill production.
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