Rural Americans are less optimistic about inflation than the rest of the country
There is an urban-rural split as well as a partisan split in how Americans view inflation, one of the driving issues in this fall's elections, said three analysts on the farmdoc daily blog on Monday. Rural Americans are less optimistic than urbanites that inflation will ease, and rural Republicans are the least optimistic of all.
Covid-19 is worst in persistently poor rural counties
Throughout the pandemic, the highest Covid-19 case rates and the lowest vaccination rates in the country have been found in persistently poor rural counties, the USDA said Wednesday in its annual Rural America at a Glance report. Those counties have also had low unemployment rates, suggesting residents continued to work despite the risk of infection by the coronavirus, said the report.
Rural-urban poverty gap narrowed over past decade
The rural poverty rate has exceeded the urban rate ever since the government began tracking both in the 1960s. The difference, 4.5 percentage points in the 1980s, has narrowed to an average of 3.1 points over the past 10 years, said the USDA in updating its rural poverty and well-being webpage.
Urban Democrats join House Agriculture Committee
Although the House Agriculture Committee's name screams "rural," three of its new members are urban Democrats: Reps. Bobby Rush from Chicago, Ro Khanna from Silicon Valley, and Luis Correa from Orange County, California.
First Black chairman of House Ag will fight climate change, rural-urban split
Rep. David Scott of Georgia soundly defeated a California rival in a vote among majority-party Democrats on Thursday to become the first Black chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Scott, who represents a suburban Atlanta district with 313 farms, pledged to tackle an array of issues, most prominently climate change and the rural-urban split, in the new session of Congress opening on Jan. 3.
Once again, rural America votes for Trump
Rural America was key to Donald Trump's election in 2016 and rural voters backed him again this year, although by how much is unclear. While one exit poll reported that 54 percent of small city or rural residents voted for Trump, the Daily Yonder said the president's performance in Ohio, a battleground state, "looks a lot like 2016," when he rolled up huge margins in rural counties.
Urban-rural poverty gap has widened since the Great Recession
For decades, the poverty rate has been higher in rural America than in metropolitan areas, a situation often attributed to an older, lower-paid, and less-educated rural population. A new USDA report says the gap between rural and urban areas widened, to 3.5 percentage points, during the economic recovery that began a decade ago.
Growing pains where urban meets rural
Central Iowa’s Dallas County is growing rapidly as the Des Moines metropolitan area spreads westward, says Harvest Public Media in a look at life in two midwestern counties where rural is meeting urban.
Rural job growth is one-tenth of big-city total
The largest U.S. urban areas, with populations of 1 million or more, enjoyed a 2-percent expansion in the number of jobs since last June, while in rural counties "job growth was a bit more than a tenth of that rate, or 0.29 percent, or about 60,000 jobs," reports the Daily Yonder. In the 924 counties that are not adjacent to any metropolitan area, the number of jobs declined by just over 1,000.
Rural poor more likely to use food stamps than urban counterparts
SNAP Maps, a new interactive tool from the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), shows that, over a five-year period, "an average of 16% of rural and small-town households participated in SNAP, compared to 13% of households in metro areas," says Feedstuffs.
Rooted and at home in a country of nomads
Far more than their city cousins, rural Americans put down roots. In fact, 42 percent of them live in the community where they grew up, versus 30 percent of city dwellers. And despite high concern among rural residents about jobs and the economy, even those who are down on their luck are often loath to move.
Culture, more than economics, divides rural and urban America
Two-thirds of rural Americans say people in big cities hold values that are different than theirs, and nearly half of urban Americans say the same thing—that rural values are different than theirs, said the Washington Post.