According to official U.S. Census Bureau definitions, rural areas comprise
open country and settlements with fewer than 2,500 residents. Urban areas
comprise larger places and densely settled areas around them. Urban areas
do not necessarily follow municipal boundaries. They are essentially densely
settled territory as it might appear from the air. Most counties, whether
metropolitan or nonmetropolitan, contain a combination of urban and rural
populations.
Urban areas are of two typesurbanized
areas and urban clustersidentical in the criteria used
to delineate them but different in size. The Census Bureau defines an
urbanized area wherever it finds an urban nucleus of 50,000 or more people.
They may or may not contain any individual cities of 50,000 or more (152
currently do not). In general, they must have a core with a population
density of 1,000 persons per square mile and may contain adjoining territory
with at least 500 persons per square mile. Urbanized areas have been delineated
using the same basic threshold (50,000 population) for each decennial
census since 1950, but procedures for delineating the urban fringe are
more liberal today. In 2000, 68 percent of Americans lived in 452 urbanized
areas.
The same computerized procedures and population density criteria are
used to identify urban clusters of at least 2,500 but less than 50,000
persons. This delineation of built-up territory around small towns and
cities is new for the 2000 census. In 2000, 11 percent of the U.S. population
lived in 3,158 urban clusters.
According to this system, rural areas consist of all territory located
outside of urbanized areas and urban clusters. The U.S. rural population
was 59 million (21 percent) in 2000.
ERS researchers and others who discuss conditions in "rural"
America most often refer to conditions in nonmetropolitan areas. Metropolitan
(metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas are defined on the basis
of counties. Counties are typically active political jurisdictions, usually
have programmatic importance at the Federal and State level, and estimates
of population, employment, and income are available for them annually.
They are also frequently used as basic building blocks for areas of economic
and social integration.
Metro and nonmetro areas are defined by the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). In 2003, OMB defined metro areas as (1) central counties
with one or more urbanized areas, and (2) outlying counties that are economically
tied to the core counties as measured by work commuting. Outlying counties
are included if 25 percent of workers living in the county commute to
the central counties, or if 25 percent of the employment in the county
consists of workers coming out from the central countiesthe so-called
"reverse" commuting pattern. Nonmetro counties are outside the
boundaries of metro areas and are further subdivided into two types: micropolitan
areas, centered on urban clusters of 10,000 or more persons, and all
remaining "noncore" counties.
Federal data for certain social and economic characteristics of counties
are available on an annual basis, some even more frequently. In contrast,
data on the characteristics of rural and urban residents are available
only from the decennial censuses. Using population counts from the 2000
Census, the following table shows the number of residents of rural and
urban areas versus nonmetro and metro areas. There were 59.1 million rural
residents in 2000, a little less than half (49 percent) of whom lived
in nonmetro counties. There were 49.2 million nonmetro county residents,
59 percent of whom lived in rural areas. Metro county residents are preponderantly
urban area residents87.1 percent. Overall, 17 percent of the national
population lived in nonmetro counties and 21 percent lived in rural areas
in 2000. For the first time, a slight majority of rural people now live
in metro areas.
Table 1. Comparison of Residency Patterns
for New Rural-Urban and Metro-Nonmetro Definitions
County
residence |
Rural |
Urban |
Total |
Number |
Percent |
Number |
Percent |
Number |
Percent |
Nonmetro |
29,001,246 |
49.2 |
20,157,427 |
9.0 |
49,158,673 |
17.4 |
Metro |
30,060,121 |
50.8 |
202,203,104 |
91.0 |
232,263,225 |
82.6 |
Total |
59,061,367 |
NA |
222,360,531 |
NA |
281,421,898 |
NA |
Share
of metro and nonmetro residents living in rural and urban areas: |
Nonmetro |
NA |
58.9 |
NA |
41.1 |
NA |
NA |
Metro |
NA |
12.9 |
NA |
87.1 |
NA |
NA |
Total |
NA |
21.0 |
NA |
79.0 |
NA |
NA |
NA=Not applicable.
Note: New urban-rural definitions, based on the 2000 decennial census,
were released in May 2002; new metro-nonmetro definitions were released
in June 2003.
Source: Calculated by ERS from 2000 Census of Population data.
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