Website offers detailed, county-by-county migration statistics by decade from 1950 to 2010

Migration is a major factor in rural areas, and now there's a useful tool to find county migration numbers over the past 60 years. A University of Wisconsin website has the numbers from 1950 to 2010, breaking down the data by age, race, Hispanic origin and sex. To use the tool, click here. Users can enter any county, pick a decade in which to look, and compare two or three counties in a graph. Or they can choose multiple decades to see migration broken down by age in a single county. Here's a comparison of migration by age in Harrison County, Kentucky, comparing the 1950s (yellow) to the 2000s (red), indicating that out-migration by young people in the last decade was only slightly less than it was in the 1950s. 

The information is based on data released in April and culled by researchers from Wisconsin, Michigan Tech University, the University of North Carolina, and the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. (Read more) (UW-Madison graphic: Net migration rates in each county in 2000-2010, per 100 people; click on map to enlarge)