USDA's Rural America at a Glance report shows disparities among urban, rural, and persistently poor rural counties

Broadband availability in nonmetropolitan counties by persistent poverty status as of 2019
(USDA map; click the image to enlarge it)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service has released the 2021 edition of its Rural America at a Glance report, a summary of broad rural trends in population, employment, poverty and income. This edition focuses on factors affecting the resiliency and recovery of rural communities in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, including population and employment change, intensity of infection, vaccination rates, and broadband internet availability and adoption.

The report also highlights differences between persistently impoverished counties and counties that aren't persistently poor. A county is deemed persistently poor if at least 20 percent or more of the population has lived at or below the federal poverty line during four consecutive decennial censuses since 1980. Except in Appalachia, such counties tend to be more ethnically diverse and are often less resilient in the face of economic and social stress because they generally have fewer resources.

Here are some of the topline findings from the report:

• 46 million Americans lived in rural areas in 2020, making up 14 percent of the population.
• The typical rural county had less than one-tenth of the population of the typical metropolitan county: 23,000 compared to 245,000.
• The rural population fell by 0.6% since 2010 while the urban population grew by 8.8%.
• The U.S. population as a whole grew more slowly in the past decade than in previous decades, in part because of declining birth rates and decreased immigration to the U.S.
• Rural counties that aren't persistently poor increased their population by 0.1%, while the population of persistently poor rural counties fell by 5.7%.
• The local economy is also a factor in rural population trends. The five states with the fastest-growing rural populations over the past decade were in the West. Four of them (Utah, Idaho, Montana and Washington) have been attracting rural residents—especially retirees—with outdoor recreation and tourism amenities for decades.
• North Dakota had the highest percentage of rural population gain over the past decade because its booming shale oil and gas sector attracted many workers.
• The states with the highest levels of rural population decline relied on farming (Kansas and Illinois), manufacturing (Pennsylvania and New York) and resource extraction (Louisiana and West Virginia).
• Poverty was a strong indicator in high rural coronavirus infection and mortality rates at the county level. Persistently poor rural counties have led the nation in percentage of cumulative coronavirus cases since September 2020.
• Coronavirus vaccination rates in rural counties have consistently lagged metro rates throughout the pandemic; persistently poor rural counties have lagged even more.
• Rural unemployment declined for nearly a decade before the pandemic, hitting a low of 3.5% in Sept. 2019. But by April 2020 the rural unemployment rate hit 13.6%, the highest rate since the 1930s. The pattern hints that persistently poor counties may have had higher coronavirus infection rates because more people in such counties were working, and such counties tended to rely on one industry, such as meatpacking.
• Rural counties lost fewer jobs than metro counties during the first year of the pandemic. Employment in consistently poor rural counties fell 2.9% from Jan. 2020 to Jan. 2021, while employment in other rural counties fell 3.1% during the same time period. Consistently poor metro counties fell 9.0%, while other metro counties fell 5.7%.
• 15.3% of rural residents living in poverty were unable to afford a home internet subscription in 2020.
• More than 90% of Americans had broadband internet as of June 2019, but only 72% of rural residents had access to it in their census blocks, and only 63% of rural residents in poverty had access.
• 83.3% of metro residents lived in census blocks with broadband access, compared to 62.7% of rural residents.
• Only 58.3% of residents in consistently poor rural counties lived in census blocks with broadband access, compared to 71.8% of residents in other rural counties.
• Broadband is less available in nonmetro persistent poverty counties in the Deep South and Southwest, and among nonmetro counties in the lower Great Plains and western Mountain States.
• Internet subscription trends suggest that households in persistently poor rural counties may face additional barriers to internet adoption such as affordability and digital literacy.
• 81.9% of rural households with internet subscriptions and 56.1% of urban households had internet subscriptions through wired sources such as cable, fiber-optic, or Digital Subscriber Line broadband.
• Metro households were much more likely to have internet access solely through cellular data plans (35.5% vs. 7.2%). This could be due to the lack of cell towers in rural areas, inability to afford it, or both. Federal programs that aim to make rural broadband more affordable tend to focus on wired services, also exacerbating the issue.
  
• Persistently poor counties, metro and rural, are more likely to have a higher share of racial minorities. The exception is Central Appalachia.