Defining the “Rural” in Rural America
The use of different
definitions of rural by Federal agencies reflects
the multidimensional qualities of rural America.
John Cromartie
Shawn Bucholtz
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The
share of the U.S. population considered
rural ranges from 17 to 49 percent depending
on the definition used.
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Rural
definitions can be based on administrative,
land-use, or economic concepts, exhibiting
considerable variation in socio-economic
characteristics and well-being of the
measured population. |
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For
research projects and economic development
programs alike, the appropriate definition
of rural will be that which meets the
goals of the endeavor.
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The term “rural” conjures
widely shared images of farms, ranches, villages,
small towns, and open spaces. Yet, when it comes
to distinguishing rural from urban places, researchers
and policymakers employ a dizzying array of definitions.
The use of multiple definitions reflects the reality
that rural and urban are multidimensional concepts,
making clear-cut distinctions between the two difficult.
Is population density the defining concern, or is
it geographic isolation? Is it small population
size that makes it necessary to distinguish rural
from urban? If so, how small is rural? Because the
U.S. is a nation in which so many people live in
areas that are not clearly rural or urban, seemingly
small changes in the way rural areas are defined
can have large impacts on who and what are considered
rural.
Researchers and policymakers share
the task of choosing appropriately from among the
more than two dozen rural definitions currently
used by Federal agencies. For example, research
on suburban development and its effect on rural
real estate prices would probably define rural differently
than a study designed to track and explain economic
and social changes affecting rural people and places.
Programs developed to address the unique problems
that small rural governments face will not necessarily
target the same rural areas as will programs that
are developed to help rural businesses operating
in credit-constrained markets. The key is to use
a rural-urban definition that best fits the needs
of a specific activity, recognizing that any simple
dichotomy hides a complex rural-urban continuum,
with very gentle gradations from one level to the
next.
Delineating a precise line between
rural and urban America that best serves the purpose,
given the complexity of today’s settlement
patterns, involves answering two questions:
- Is a given urban entity defined in terms of
its administrative boundaries, its land-use patterns,
or its economic influence?
- What is the minimum population size for an
entity to be considered urban?
By identifying urban areas first,
rural is defined as the territory that is not included.
Good decisionmaking in choosing an appropriate rural
definition requires an understanding of the key
characteristics of urban entities and how they,
in turn, determine the characteristics of rural
definitions derived from them.
Challenge Number One: Choosing
an Appropriate Urban Boundary
There are three different concepts
of “urban” that lead to very different
boundary definitions, and thus to very different
rural definitions:
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The administrative
concept, used by many USDA rural development
programs, defines urban along municipal or other
jurisdictional boundaries.
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The land-use concept,
used by the Census Bureau, identifies urban
areas based on how densely settled the area
is—the picture of settlement you get from
an airplane.
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The economic concept,
used in most rural research applications, recognizes
the influence of cities on labor, trade, and
media markets that extend well beyond densely
settled cores to include broader “commuting
areas.”
These three concepts represent
progressively expansive urban boundaries that differ
considerably from one another. For instance, in
2000, Peoria, IL, as defined by its municipal boundaries,
encompassed an area with about 113,000 people but
as an economic entity it included nearly 367,000
people. Applying a land-use concept resulted in
an area with a population between these two alternatives.
For rural development programs
that provide assistance to or through local governments,
an administrative definition of rural is often a
starting point for determining program eligibility.
On the other hand, infrastructure programs meant
to overcome the disadvantages sparsely populated
areas face in providing water and sewer services
may find rural definitions derived from the land-use
concept helpful in targeting assistance. For programs
requiring the coordination of efforts within broader
market areas, such as area-wide transportation planning
assistance, a definition based on economic concepts
may be more appropriate. So ubiquitous are county-level
data that researchers often divide urban and rural
areas along county lines, making “nonmetro”
the de facto economic definition of rural for most
research purposes (see box, “How
Are the Boundaries Between Rural and Urban Developed?”).
Challenge Number Two: Choosing
a Population Size Threshold
In addition to being defined as
the area outside urban boundaries—determined
in different ways depending on the concept—rural
includes some set of towns and villages below a
chosen population threshold. For the 1910 Census,
rural meant open countryside and any place with
fewer than 2,500 people. Though the Census Bureau
modified its definition over the decades to keep
up with suburban expansion, it did not change the
2,500 population threshold as the minimum size for
urban places. Over the same period, thresholds for
some USDA rural development programs were adjusted
upward, arguably an appropriate response to rapid
urbanization. For example, the Rural Housing Program
began in 1949, serving communities with fewer than
2,500 people, but it now sets eligibility at less
than 20,000 people.
Proponents of a higher threshold
point out that towns of 2,500 people typically have
not maintained the levels and diversity of employment,
goods, and services that existed in 1910. The tremendous
transportation and communication advances of the
past 100 years helped reorganize economic and social
activities around larger towns and cities. The debate
over an appropriate population size threshold between
rural and urban places is ongoing. Definitions used
by Federal agencies use population-size thresholds
ranging from 2,500 to 50,000 people. For instance,
the definition of rural used for USDA’s Community
Facilities programs consists of territory outside
Census places of 20,000 or more. In contrast, the
definition of nonmetro areas used by most researchers
applies a 50,000 population threshold.
Different Definitions Mean
Big Differences in Rural Populations
Depending on the boundary choice
and the population threshold, the share of the U.S.
population defined as rural and its socioeconomic
characteristics vary substantially. In 2000, 21
percent of the U.S. population was designated rural
using the Census Bureau’s land-use definition
(outside urban areas of 2,500 or more people), compared
with 17 percent for economically based nonmetro
areas (outside metro areas of 50,000 or more).
However, alternative definitions
increase that range from 7 to 49 percent. Raising
the population size threshold for the land-use definition
from 2,500 to 50,000 increases the rural population
from 21 to 32 percent. Lowering the threshold for
the economic definition from 50,000 to 10,000 decreases
the rural population from 17 to 7 percent.
Holding the population threshold
constant at the minimum level of 2,500 people but
moving from an administrative to a land-use definition
drops the U.S. rural population by a third, from
31 to 21 percent. This change represents a shift
in the designation of people who live in areas typically
described as suburban, who are counted as rural
under the narrower administrative concept but as
urban under the land-use version. A similar shift
in suburban population occurs at the upper population
threshold of 50,000, where rural population decreases
from 32 percent based on the Census Bureau’s
land-use concept to 17 percent under the economic
definition. (For descriptions of each definition,
see box, “How Are the Boundaries
Between Rural and Urban Developed?”)
Rural population
size and characteristics vary by definition |
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Rural
defined as territory outside
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Census
Bureau
places
(administrative) |
Census
Bureau
urban areas
(land-use) |
OMB
metro and
micro areas
(economic)
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with populations less than:
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2,500 |
20,000 |
2,500 |
50,000 |
10,000 |
50,000 |
Population, 2000
(millions) |
281.0 |
87.7 |
138.5 |
59.1 |
89.5 |
19.9 |
48.8 |
Percent of population
defined as rural |
na |
31.1 |
49.2 |
21.0 |
31.8 |
7.1 |
17.4 |
Percent with a
college degree |
30.7 |
26.8 |
28.3 |
22.5 |
22.9 |
18.5 |
20.8 |
Average household
income ($1,000) |
57.0 |
56.0 |
56.0 |
51.0 |
49.0 |
40.0 |
43.0 |
na
= not applicable.
Source: USDA, Economic Research Service using
data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2000
decennial census. |
Alternating the definition of
rural also varies the socioeconomic characteristics
of designated areas. Rural populations consistently
show lower education and income levels than the
overall U.S. population, however they are defined.
Given that rural definitions based on administrative
boundaries include larger shares of what could be
classed as suburban areas, the education and income
levels of their populations are closer to those
of the general U.S. population. The suburban population
counted as rural is much smaller for the economic
definition represented by nonmetro areas. Thus,
the share of the rural population with a college
degree drops from 28 to 18 percent across this range
and the average household income drops from $56,000
to $40,000.
Multiple Measures of Rural
Serve Multiple Purposes
Rural definitions are not limited
to the options discussed here. For instance, ERS
provides an alternative to OMB’s metro and
micro definitions that uses census tracts instead
of counties (see box, “What
Are the RUCA Codes?”). In the 2002 farm
bill, administrative and land-use concepts were
essentially combined for a rural definition adopted
by several USDA funding programs. Eligible territory
includes areas outside Census places of 50,000 or
more and their adjacent urban areas.
With so many options, which definition
is best? The choice of a rural definition should
be based on the purpose of the activity. For instance,
analyzing the effect of population loss on per capita
fiscal costs for rural communities is best approached
using administrative boundaries because taxation
and service provision often follow these lines.
Tracking urbanization and its influence on farmland
prices is best approached from a land-use definition
that can distinguish built-up territory from surrounding,
less developed land and the degree to which this
boundary shifts over time. Mapping discontinuities
in the supply and demand for medical services and
analyzing their effect on rural well-being would
likely focus on distance to labor markets as a key
determinant of health care accessibility.
In any application involving measurement,
data availability will play a major role. Studies
of the effects of unemployment, poverty, retirement,
industrial restructuring, and other trends on rural
areas cannot easily employ administrative or land-use
definitions because data are not available to support
them. County-level, economic definitions (nonmetro
areas) dominate rural research for this reason.
However, researchers need to carefully analyze and
report the implications of any definitional choice:
Who is included in the study and who is left out?
What information is being masked by using large
geographical building blocks, such as counties?
How does this rural geography vary by State?
Policymakers face the same questions
when crafting eligibility rules that best fit particular
rural programs but are not as limited by data considerations.
Considerable flexibility exists in tailoring definitions
to suit a given application, and the appropriate
choice may vary depending on program goals. A program
providing housing assistance may be designed to
target more isolated or economically distressed
rural settings than would programs designed to stimulate
business starts and job creation. Rural communities
lacking access to health services may not be the
same areas missing broadband support. Careful consideration
of alternative definitions of rural and their socioeconomic
characteristics has the potential to improve the
overall efficiency of economic development programs
by enabling them to better target the intended beneficiaries.
How
Are the Boundaries Between Rural and Urban
Developed? |
Rural
definitions based on the administrative concept
start with the Census Bureau’s list
of “places.” Most places listed
in the 2000 Census are incorporated entities
with legally prescribed boundaries (e.g.,
Peoria City), but some are locally recognized,
unincorporated communities. Rural is defined
as territory outside these place boundaries,
together with places smaller than a selected
population threshold. For example, USDA’s
Telecom Hardship Loan Program defines rural
as any area outside Census places of 5,000
or more people.
Rural definitions based
on the land-use concept most often start with
the Census Bureau’s set of urban areas,
consisting of densely settled territory. Rural
as defined by the Census Bureau includes open
countryside and settlements with fewer than
2,500 residents. Urban areas are specifically
designed to capture densely settled territory
regardless of where municipal boundaries are
drawn. They include adjacent suburbs that
are outside place boundaries and exclude any
territory within places that does not meet
the density criteria.
The most widely used rural
definition based on the economic concept consists
of the 2,050 nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) counties
lying outside metro boundaries. Metropolitan
(metro) areas are county-based entities that
account for the economic influence of cities.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
defines them as:
- Core counties with one or more urban
areas of 50,000 people or more, and;
- Outlying counties economically tied to
the core counties, as measured by the share
of the employed population that commutes
to and from core counties.
Using these criteria, urban entities are
defined as countywide or multicounty labor
market areas extending well beyond their built-up
cores.
Prior to 2000, the land-use
concept (Census urban areas) and the economic
concept (OMB metro areas) were not applied
to urban entities below 50,000 people. In
2000, the Census Bureau added urban areas
ranging in size from 2,500 to 49,999 (labeling
them urban clusters to distinguish them from
the larger urbanized areas that had been defined
since 1950). OMB added a new micropolitan
(micro) area classification, using the same
criteria as used for metro areas but lowering
the threshold to 10,000 people. These modifications
greatly increase the flexibility of researchers
and administrators to tailor rural definitions
to different target populations. |
What
Are the RUCA Codes? |
Counties
are often too large, especially in Western
States, to accurately represent labor market
areas in all cases. Thus, metro and micro
areas often include territory that is legitimately
rural from both a land-use and economic perspective.
ERS Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes
provide an alternative, economic classification
using census tracts rather than counties.
Although relatively new, these codes have
been widely adopted for both research and
policy, especially in rural health applications.
RUCA codes follow (as closely
as possible) the same concepts and criteria
used to define metro and micro areas. By using
the more detailed census tracts, they provide
a different geographic pattern of settlement
classification. While counties are generally
too large to delineate labor market areas
below the 10,000 population threshold, RUCA
codes identify such areas for towns with populations
as small as 2,500. Additional information
and files containing the codes are available
in the ERS
Measuring Rurality Briefing Room. |
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