There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.
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America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.
According to a recent Agriculture Department estimate, the rural population did rebound by 0.25 percent from 2020 to 2022 as some families decamped from urban areas during the pandemic.
But demographers say they are still evaluating whether that trend will continue, and if so, where. Pennsylvania has been particularly afflicted. Job losses in the manufacturing and energy industries that began in the 1980s prompted many younger families to relocate to Sun Belt states. The relocations helped fuel population surges in places like Texas and Georgia. But here, two-thirds of the state’s 67 counties have experienced a drop in population in recent years.
Right.
Honestly for as much “woe is me” that they crammed into this piece, my takeaway was mostly just, “Hmmm…good.”
Like…I love rural PA, I’m just not wild about a lot of the people who live there. They vote against my own interests (and theirs), disproportionately influence state government, and welcome corporations that proudly destroy the environment while taking a hostile stance toward anyone not like them.
This isn’t down to every last person, of course, but broadly speaking, the ones who aren’t fitting that template are also not the ones doing most of the dying.
So the piece is reading, to me, more as, “the people most responsible for keeping the shitty aspects of Pennsylvania shitty are dying faster than they’re breeding”…which is good news for the more reasonable residents of the state.
