The U.S. nonmetropolitan population peaked in 1940 at 75 million people, representing 57 percent of the total population (Gibson 2010). At the time, America was still mostly a rural society, with the majority of people living... [ view full abstract ]
The U.S. nonmetropolitan population peaked in 1940 at 75 million people, representing 57 percent of the total population (Gibson 2010). At the time, America was still mostly a rural society, with the majority of people living in small towns or on farms. Just 10 years later, the 1950 decennial census revealed, for the first time, that the majority of all Americans lived in metropolitan counties. The 1940s marked a clear inflection point historically in America’s evolving settlement system, one marked by accelerating urbanization and population concentration. This process, with some stops and starts along the way (Fuguitt 1985), has continued unabated ever since. Metropolitan growth has occurred as a result of the population growth in and around America’s cities (often in the form of suburbanization), but also from the continuing reclassification of the fastest growing nonmetropolitan counties into entirely new metropolitan areas or into suburban counties at the periphery of existing metropolitan areas (Fuguitt, Heaton, and Lichter 1989; Johnson, Nucci and Long 2005).
Today, rural America is once again at an important demographic transition point. In the past, declines since 1940 in the overall size of the nonmetropolitan population—from 75 million to 47 million—resulted paradoxically from rapid population growth, followed by subsequent reclassification to metropolitan status. Yet, for nonmetropolitan counties “left behind” by reclassification, on-going net out-migration historically was more than offset by natural increase—the difference between births and deaths. Nonmetropolitan counties continued to grow in the aggregate. This historical pattern is no longer true today. Nonmetropolitan counties, as they are defined by OMB in 2013 (on the basis of the 2010 decennial census tabulations), are now experiencing absolute depopulation for the first time in America’s history. Between 2010 and 2016, nonmetropolitan counties declined by just over 190,000 people, representing a -0.4 percentage loss (Cromartie 2017). Population decline, in the aggregate, no longer results from demographic success alone, that is, from the reclassification of nonmetropolitan counties to metropolitan status on the basis of past-decade population growth. It also includes a component that represents the loss of demographic vitality, a pattern of rural population change—depopulation—that is now transforming many rural communities and reducing the prospect of growth for the foreseeable future.
The significant impact of reclassification is often overlooked in research examining demographic change in rural and urban America. Our proposed research will examine how population change in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan counties is influenced by this reclassification. Reclassification occurs each decade as new metropolitan areas are announced by the Office of Management and Budget three to four years after each decennial census. Our preliminary analysis suggests that some nonmetropolitan population loss in each decade was due to changes in classification rules favoring metro status, especially in 1980 and 2000.
