American Suburbia Is Shrinking For The First Time Ever

The population of rural and small-town America contracted over the past two years for the first time on record as young people left to search out work in the cities and birth rates fell, according to official data.

An analysis of US Census Bureau data by the Department of Agriculture found that although population growth in America’s rural heartland has risen and fallen for decades with changes in the US economy, the pace of decline accelerated in the years 2010-2012. And for the first time, the so-called “natural increase” in population – total births minus deaths – was insufficient to offset the loss from those migrating away.

The net loss of population represents a natural increase of 135,000 offset by a larger loss from out-migration of 179,000, a drop of 0.9 per cent.

Moreover, so-called exurban areas, which have grown rapidly for decades as cities sprawled, also declined in population for the first time during the 2010-12 period. The rate of decline was marginal, but considerable in the context of the years 2004-06 when exurbs added roughly 500,000 to their population.

The few rural areas experiencing population growth include those regions where new energy sources have been uncovered such as North Dakota, which is now in the midst of a new oil boom.

The population shift is concentrated most heavily in the mid-western states that form America’s bread basket as well as in parts of the old industrial north east. It may have profound implications for the economic outlook as well as for the political character of those parts of the country.

The trend is one of a number that are helping Democrats in presidential elections, as the party appeals more to urban voters. As they are more concentrated, they are also easier to organise and get out to vote.

The decline of rural areas also in some respects parallels the broader changes in the electorate, in which white voters are declining relative to the growing minority population, especially Hispanics, resulting in new pushes on issues like immigration reform.

It is not clear that the population decline is permanent, the USDA said. Nevertheless, much of rural America – 15 per cent of the US population spread across 72 per cent of its land area – faces population decline.

John Cromartie, a geographer with the USDA’s Resource and Rural Economics Division, said that the exodus of younger rural residents had left many rural areas with a population that is “ageing in place”.

Losing people in their 20s and 30s, the prime childbearing years, meant many rural regions were seeing their birth rates decline significantly. Those people who did move to rural areas tended to be older adults past their childbearing years.

Mr Cromartie said that although further analysis of the latest data was required, earlier studies suggested that rural America was ageing more quickly than the rest of the nation. A 2009 analysis of data for the first half of the decade showed, for example, that those aged 65 and over accounted for 15 per cent of the rural population but 12 per cent of population nationally.

Additional reporting by Richard McGregor in Washington

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