Rural population drops for 5th straight year

The Great Recession continues to reverberate in rural America and is the most likely cause of the slight decline in population from 2015 to 2016. But in other ways, rural counties appear to be headed back to “normal” population gains. All in all, it’s another wait-and-see year for rural population trends.  On one hand, the rural population decreased again. It’s a problematic trend, because it usually means fewer people working, fewer kids in school, fewer people shopping and doing the other things that contribute to the local economy. But, on the other hand, the decline was the smallest since the trend started – a net loss of only 21,000 residents or 0.05%. The net change is so small that it could be reversed by adjustments in the estimates that occur in future years. Another finding that may indicate rural America could head back into positive population change soon is that rural counties that are closer to cities actually grew slightly from 2015-2016. For the past 40 or 50 years, it’s been normal for rural counties adjacent to metro areas to grow more quickly than counties located farther from cities, said Kenneth M. Johnson, chief demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. But until the most recent estimates came out, the opposite has been true following the Great Recession