Income Inequality across the Rural-Urban Continuum in the United States, 1970-2016

The growth in macro‐level income inequality in the United States is well established, but less is known about patterns of inequality at subnational scales and how they vary between and within rural and urban localities. Using data from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, we produce estimates of within‐county income inequality from 1970 to 2016 and analyze differences in inequality levels, the persistence of high (low) inequality, and populations' exposure to high (low) inequality across the rural‐urban continuum. We find that income inequality has historically been higher in non‐metropolitan than metropolitan counties, but inequality levels converged by 2016 due to growing inequality in metropolitan counties. Additionally, levels of inequality were generally persistent within counties over time, except that counties characterized by low inequality in 1970 were unlikely to remain as such in 2016. Third, non‐trivial shares of the metropolitan population resided in low‐inequality contexts in 1970, but virtually none of the U.S. population resided in such places by 2016. Residence in high‐inequality counties is normative in rural and urban America. This statistical analysis provides an updated portrait of income inequality across the rural‐urban continuum, and should spur additional research on stratification in rural America during an era of growing inequality.

Metropolitan Reclassification and the Urbanization of Rural America

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.

A Demographic Deficit? Local Population Aging and Access to Services in Rural America, 1990-2010

Population aging is being experienced by many rural communities in the U.S., as evidenced by increases in the median age and the high incidence of natural population decrease. The implications of these changes in population structure for the daily lives of the residents in such communities have received little attention. We address this issue in the current study by examining the relationship between population aging and the availability of service-providing establishments in the rural U.S. between 1990 and 2010. Using data mainly from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we estimate a series of fixed-effects regression models to identify the relationship between median age and establishment counts net of changes in overall population and other factors. We find a significant, but non-linear relationship between county median age and the total number of service-providing establishments, and counts of most specific types of services. We find a positive effect of total population size across all of our models. This total population effect is consistent with other research, but the independent effects of age structure that we observe represent a novel finding and suggest that age structure is a salient factor in local rural development and community wellbeing.

Female labor force participation and suicide

To test the role conflict and role enhancement hypotheses, this paper examines the link between female labor force participation and suicide. Using a special tabulation of age/sex-specific suicide data for metropolitan areas in the United States, we estimate separate multivariate regression models for women and men in 1970 and 1980. Our findings show that in 1970 the level of female labor force participation among married women with small children is not related to the female suicide rate but is related to the male suicide rate in a positive direction. By 1980 the relationship between female labor force participation and the male and female suicide rate is negative, suggesting that the well-being of both men and women is enhanced by role accumulation among women.

The pattern of counterurbanization in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1977-85

County-level data are used to examine the evidence for turnaround migration from urban to rural areas in the Federal Republic of Germany during the period 1978-1985. "The coexistence of suburbanization and counterurbanization for the 1978-85 time period is demonstrated. Young adults, 18-25 years of age, gravitated towards the urban cores of metropolitan areas and smaller urban areas. All the other age-groups moved mainly towards the outer suburbs of metropolitan areas, the suburbs of second-tier cities, and the rural counties. The two migration matrices indicate that counterurbanization at the level of regional planning areas was not present in 1977 but started in 1978 and it was present in 1983. At the same spatial level, evidence of a net gain of metropolitan areas from second-tier cities and rural areas is also provided for 1977. This pattern was reversed for the 1978-85 period."