Economic Research Service finds rural America losing population

The Economic Research Service has released its Rural America at a Glance report for 2021, finding that the rural population shrank by 0.6 percent between 2010 and 2020. The authors find that the decline has been driven by losses in rural counties designated as persistently poor, where the population has dropped by 5.7 percent. In the meantime, urban populations grew by 8.8 percent, and even persistently poor urban places, by 5.8 percent. Analysis of pandemic-era measures show that rural places have experienced more infections per 100,000 residents than urban places, and rural vaccination rates trail urban rates by more than 10 percentage points. While job loss has recovered in both types of places, rural residents in persistently poor places are disadvantaged by their lower broadband connectivity rates. Finally, the paper shows that persistently poor rural counties are twice as racially diverse as their nonpoor rural counterparts. Between population loss, low broadband connectivity, and disproportionately pandemic impacts, the report’s findings suggest that rural Black, Latinx, and American Indian residents face a nexus of economic challenges.