By Josh Seidemann, Vice President of Policy, NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association
Don Henley’s 1982 hit Dirty Laundry was a then-updated take on the theme, “Bad news sells papers.” But if Mr. Henley were to look at data from the U.S. Census Bureau, he might be hard-pressed to sell a song about rural America.
To be sure, we can find both bright spots and opportunities to overcome challenges in rural America; we discussed this a few weeks ago “Let’s Tell the Rest of the (Smart) Rural Story,” when we contrasted rural health care shortages with improving educational attainment and economic development achievements of various NTCA Smart Rural Communities members. Today, we can dive into some data that improves the picture even more.
Home ownership is often identified as a key step in building personal financial security and maintaining neighborhoods. Homeowners build wealth over time; obtain tax deductions on mortgage interest; and often pay less over time than they would in rent. For communities, home ownership confers the benefits of residents who are invested (literally) in their neighborhood and ensuring a favorable environment. By the way: rural areas in the U.S. have higher home ownership rates than urban areas. And, it’s by a pretty wide margin, too – 81.1% home ownership rates in rural areas vs. 59.8% in urban areas.
Images of rural poverty also change when held against the data. The gap between rural and urban poverty presents differently. The U.S. Census Bureau reported a narrow gap in 2016 (13.3% rural vs. 16.0% urban, counting families with incomes beneath the poverty level), while the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) in 2017 reported non-metro poverty at 16.4%, as compared to metro poverty rates of 12.9%. While ERS develops a poverty gap that is more favorable to urban, it also finds that the rural poverty rate plummeted from close to 35% in 1959 to 16.4% in 2017. Overall, the 13.3%-16.4% spread among the Census Bureau and ERS data trends roughly with numbers since the late 1960s, when the national poverty rate plummeted from 22.4% in 1960 to 12.6% in 1970 (remember President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty?). Since then, poverty rates follow a trajectory that looks a bit like a roller coaster after the first climb – some ups, some downs, but nothing as dramatic as the initial drop. And, overall, the rural rate is not dramatically different over time than the average national rate. So, perceptions of pervasive rural poverty are likely better portrayed (and addressed) as areas with persistent poverty.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge the famous observation of 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli – “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (a comment made popular in the United States by Mark Twain). Beneath all of the numbers above, there are innumerable factors and forces that create the swells and decreases. And, each of those factors may play out differently in various regions (remember what we said a few weeks ago – “If you’ve seen one rural area, you’ve seen one rural area.”). But the data certainly indicate that there is strength in rural areas, and a foundation upon which smart rural achievement can continue to grow. And while that good news might not sell papers, it certainly bears reporting.
