Fact Sheet: America's rural renaissance

FACT SHEET

America's "rural renaissance"

The following summarizes some of the recent findings confirming a widespread demographic trend of individuals returning to the countryside or moving to rural areas from cities and suburbs. While there are rural counties that continue to experience a devastating decline, areas near urban centers or with rich scenic or amenity values are generally experiencing a widespread rebound in population. Decades of research by Dr. Kenneth Johnson at Loyola University in Chicago is invaluable in better understanding this rural migration, in particular his publication, The Rural Rebound: Recent Nonmetropilitan Demographic Trends in the United States, co-authored by Calvin Beale in 1999.

The Numbers

In 2000, rural areas contained 56.1 million residents, or about 20-percent of the total U.S. population. (216 million people, or 80-percent, live in metro areas)

The long era of rural population stagnation and decline is now over.

- More people are moving from urban to rural areas and fewer rural people are leaving. Most rural areas in the U.S. are now growing at the fastest rate in more than 20 years, only the second period of widespread rural growth in 80 years (mostly from natural increase through "large farming families"). Source: The Rural Rebound: Recent Nonmetropilitan Demographic Trends in the United States by Kenneth Johnson and Calvin Beale, 1999.

- "Data from the 2000 Census reveal that nonmetropolitan [rural] areas of the United States contained 56.1 million residents, a gain of 5.6 million since April of 1990. In all, 1,702 of 2,303 nonmetropolitan counties grew between 1990 and 2000; 662 more than during the 1980s. Most of the growth came from net migration rather than from the natural increase (births-deaths) that has traditionally fueled nonmetropolitan growth." Source: The Rural Rebound: Recent Nonmetropilitan Demographic Trends in the United States by Kenneth Johnson and Calvin Beale, 1999.

- In the 1970s, the rural turnaround resulted in a "nonmetropolitan population gain that actually exceeded the gain in metropolitan areas for the first time in at least 150 years." Source: The Rural Rebound: Recent Nonmetropilitan Demographic Trends in the United States by Kenneth Johnson and Calvin Beale, 1999.

More families with children are choosing to raise kids in the country.

- "The increasing propensity for those in their 30s (and their children) to move to or remain in rural areas...under-65 age group may now be contributing much more to the rural migration than those over 65." Source: The Rural Rebound: Recent Nonmetropilitan Demographic Trends in the United States by Kenneth Johnson and Calvin Beale, 1999.

Small farmers and rural landowners can help restore ecological health and stability.

"Where large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management -- no trees, no wildlife, endless monoculture -- small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and soil...preserving biodiversity, open space, and trees, and reducing land degradation." Source: Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Winter 1999, Vol. 6, No. 4.

- "In the United States, small farmers devote 17 percent of their area to woodlands, compared to only five percent on large farms, and keep nearly twice as much of their land in "soil improving uses." Source: Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Winter 1999, Vol. 6, No. 4.

- "Approximately 40 percent of Oregon's farm and ranch acreage is owned by non-farmers who are renting or leasing the land back to farmers. The arrangement has helped keep nearly six million of Oregon's 15 million acres of agricultural land in production even though some 12,500 landowners figuratively never get on a tractor." Source: Oregon Department of Agriculture, August 22, 2001

Deconcentration, where people move from larger, more densely populated areas to smaller, more lightly settled areas, has made a rebound, not a reversal.

- "Americans are not returning to a pioneering life of farming. They are using technology...and new attitudes toward work to diminish the 'friction' of distance." Source: The Rural Rebound by Kenneth Johnson, 1999.

The resettling of rural America is by a diversity of people.

- "The new arrivals are a mixed lot of retirees, blue-collar workers, lone-eagle professionals, and disenchanted city dwellers; all see a better way of life..." Source: The Rural Rebound by Kenneth Johnson, 1999.

Moving rural is not a romantic fixation.

"During the eighties, it was still popularly assumed that living country-style was a part of the post-industrial reaction to complexity and technology, and that those who left the urban areas were slightly nostalgic, if not Luddite...Migration was in fact a reversal of the economic considerations that had driven families off the land in the first place. The cities no longer offered the best jobs, the most security, or the richest lifestyle...Police were beefed up, but the streets were dirtier. Teachers were better paid, but the schools were dangerous. Housing was available, but rents were expensive. Food was costly, tension unbearable, and smog unabated." Source: Context Institute, 1983/1996 Being a Planetary Villager, "Rural Renaissance: One Scenario for America in the nineties" by Paul Hawken, James Ogilvy, and Peter Schwartz.

Rural America is important to the nation.

"Rural America is home to a fifth of the Nation's people, keeper of natural amenities and natural treasures, and safeguard of a unique part of American culture, tradition and history, [comprising] over 2,000 counties and containing 75 percent of the Nation's land." Source: the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service

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