Some places will shift from rural to metropolitan this year, and that will likely make the rest of rural America look worse

Screenshot of part of Daily Yonder interactive map that

shows major growth in rural counties near metro areas

in Texas, Oklahoma, southwest Missouri, Tennessee,

Georgia and elsewhere. (Rural Blog adaptation)

"Rural" is defined in many ways, and because one major definer is changing its definition, "Some of the nation's most economically successful 'rural' counties will be reclassified as metropolitan, moving their populations and economic output from non-metropolitan to metropolitan," writes Saran Melotte of The Daily Yonder. "This year, the Office of Management and Budget will create a major revision for its list of metropolitan statistical areas based on 2020 Census data. . . . It’s one of the most common ways that policy makers, federal agencies, and researchers use to define what we mean by 'rural'."

MSAs are defined by a combination of population figures and commuting patterns. The 2020 census found that the rural counties that were growing were thsoe closest to metropolitan areas, and some of them have likely grown so much that they will be reclassified as metropolitan. In the last reclassification, in 2013, "OMB shifted 112 non-metropolitan counties into the metropolitan column, moving 5.7 million residents into metro areas," Melotte notes. Their counties either gained enough population to have a central city of at least 50,000, or the share of the county's workers "who commuted to an adjoining metropolitan county grew past 25%. The latter factor is "more commonly the cause of reclassification," according to Daniel T. Lichter of Cornell University and Kenneth M. Johnson of the University of New Hampshire. They call this the paradox of rural population decline and say it "gives a falsely bleak impression of rural America," Melotte writes.

"You might think you know rural when you see it. But what if you had to provide a clear definition?" Melote asks. "That's where things get messy. Even geographers, demographers, and statisticians can't agree on a single definition of rural. Depending on which definition you use, rural Americans either comprise 46 million residents or over 60 million residents. Rural populations are either growing or stagnating, economically vibrant or persistently poor, predominantly white or rapidly diversifying. . . . Demographers stress the importance of considering how our definitions might obscure the truth about rural America. . . ."When counties that have large rural populations are lumped into the metropolitan category, it can make rural America look poorer and smaller than it really is."

Melotte notes, "Federal agencies use over a dozen definitions of rural. But at their core, those definitions are generally variations on two categorization systems," the MSA or the Bureau of the Census definition, which recently raised the threshold for an urban place from 2,500 to 5,000 or 2,000 housing units.