People with college degrees increasingly cluster, but not in rural areas; bad for rural economies

College-educated people in this country used to be more equally distributed in this country, reports the Daily Yonder. And while the percentage of people in the U.S. who have a college degree has increased dramatically in both rural and urban areas since 1970, those with college degrees are clustering in some counties and not others. This diversity is a demographic divide with serious economic consequences.

The map below shows the distribution of adults (those over 25 years of age) who had a four-year college degree in 2010, when 27.9 percent of U.S. adults had such degrees. The counties in blue had a higher percentage; those in red were at the national average or below.

The map below is for 1970, when 10.7 percent of U.S. adults had a college degree.

“Obviously education is important for the individual, but it’s also important for the community,” said Mark Partridge, a rural economist at Ohio State University. “The higher share of your population that has a bachelors degree, the higher the income of the population. It's good for raising employment growth and wages for everyone." There is a self-reinforcing pattern, write Bill Bishop of the Yonder and Roberto Gallardo of the Southern Rural Development Center. "Companies increasingly need college-educated workers and so they thrive in places where there are more people with college degrees. As these firms expand, they attract more college graduates into the community — and that in turn spurs development dependent on a highly-educated workforce."