Rural counties gain population for second consecutive year

Louisiana had the highest rate of rural-population decline, 0.82%.

Driven by migration to rural areas near major cities, the population of America's rural counties grew in 2023, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of Census Bureau data. "The gain came primarily in counties that are closest to metropolitan areas and was the result of people moving to those counties from other parts of the country or internationally," Sarah Melotte reports.

"From 2022 to 2023, the number of people living in nonmetropolitan (rural) counties grew by 109,000 residents, a 0.24% increase. That’s slightly lower than the 150,000 residents that rural America gained from 2021 to 2022. These gains came after rural America lost nearly 300,000 residents in the 2010s. Meanwhile, metropolitan counties grew by 1.5 million residents from 2022 and 2023, a 0.53% increase in population."

Migration was key to rural population growth, because "rural counties recorded 610,000 deaths and 491,000 births . . . what demographers call natural decrease, which happens when the number of deaths is greater than the number of births." Almost all the rural population growth, 97 percent, occurred in counties that are adjacent to metropolitan areas. Overall, the growth in rural counties was small: 0.24%. Other types of areas gained much more, except the cores of major metros, which gained 0.14%.