Cooperative Living July 2017 - 25

YourBusiness | by Steve Johnson, Contributing Writer
Surveying the Rural and Urban Divide
The significant differences that exist between rural and urban America.
The
multifaceted
role of electric
cooperatives in
the communities they
serve may well be
contributing to
these positive
trends.
W
hether it's the pace of life, the
economic base or the
educational opportunities,
there's little doubt about significant
differences that exist between rural and
urban America. Now, new data from the
U.S. Census Bureau show just how great
those divides are.
Rural residents are significantly less
transient than their urban counterparts,
more likely to own their own homes and
more likely to have served in the armed
services, the Bureau said in its American
Community Survey (ACS), published
last December at www.census.gov.
The nation's largest household survey,
the ACS is based on data from 2011 to
2015 and is the major source of
information on the three-quarters of
counties whose populations are too
small to yield single-year statistics.
According to the bureau's definition,
rural areas encompass 97 percent of the
nation's land but account for less than
20 percent of the population, or about
60 million people. That includes 47
million adults, the basis for much of the
number crunching.
On three common measures, there's
a big split between rural and
urban America:
* Rural Americans seem to have a
greater attachment to their birth
states than urban dwellers. Almost
two out of three people in rural areas,
or 65.4 percent, still live in the state
of their birth, although they might
have moved out of state for a time.
Less than half of urban residents, or
48.3 percent, live in their birth state.
* The ranks of home ownership are
also much greater in rural areas. The
home ownership rate is a whopping
81.1 percent in rural America,
compared with 59.8 percent in urban
America. While the median home
value is about $40,000 higher in
urban regions, there are far more
single-family homes owned in rural
regions, the census said.
* Military service is another key
division point between rural and
urban areas. Veterans comprised 10.4
percent of the population of adults in
rural areas compared with 7.8 percent
of adults in urban areas.
Steven Johnson is a staff writer at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
Some of the other findings:
* Rural America tends to be older than
urban America, with a median age of 51
as compared with 45.
* Rural residents also tend to be less
educated, with 19.5 percent of adults
holding at least a bachelor's degree,
versus 29 percent in urban areas.
* Rural America still is struggling to get
online. Some 23.8 percent of households
lack internet access, compared with only
17.3 percent of urban households.
However, other findings reinforce the
notion that rural America is starting to
stabilize or even gain ground. Median
household income is only slightly lower, at
$52,936 annually in rural areas compared
with $54,296 in urban areas.
Also, poverty is less common for rural
adults and children than for urban adults and
children. The poverty rate is 11.7 percent
for adults and 18.9 percent for children in
rural areas, compared with 14 percent and
22.3 percent, respectively in urban areas.
The multifaceted role of electric
cooperatives in the communities they
serve may well be contributing to these
positive trends. 
www.co-opliving.com
July 2017 | Cooperative Living | 23
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Cooperative Living July 2017

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