Nearly 15 percent of Americans live in nonmetropolitan counties, also known as rural areas, a total of 46.2 mln people in 2013. The urban/rural ratio has been rising for a century as the United States urbanized.
There could be a new trend – an overall decline in the number of people living in rural areas, not just proportionally fewer. “Non-metro areas lost population between July 2012 and 2013, continuing a three-year trend. While hundreds of individual counties have lost population over the years, this is the first period of overall population decline in nonmetro America,” says USDA’s Economic Research Service.
The Daily Yonder says, “The population loss occurred entirely in the nation’s least populated counties – “noncore” counties, which have no cities larger than 25,000 residents. In those small counties, the cumulative population dropped by 36,000 from 2012-2013, Census (Bureau) data show.”