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.
…
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.
This rural Pennsylvania town could get a huge population boom if they had a “we welcome queer people and migrants and we don’t tolerate hate” policy they announced to the world.
But of course, that’s way too far for them.
Really? That’s your go-to glib answer? No discussion about education opportunities or job prospects? No question about why the downturn was really noted in 2014? Just immediately jumping to the conclusion that rural people MUST be hateful?
Disappointing.
This thread is filled with close minded, bigoted people shitting on people for being close minded and bigoted. It would be funny if it wasn’t so terribly tragic.
But you seem new here. This is pretty typical for Lemmy. So I guess I should say welcome. Lol
The existence of close minded, bigoted people automatically renders them in violation of just about every societal norm and contract.
Punching a racist/homophobe/terf/Mazi is always justified. Their existence is a threat to others because of their beliefs.
Would you tell an abused spouse to tolerate or be less close minded about being hit or emotionally abused?
Go f off with your fence sitting.
The defence against your claim is the Tolerance Paradox
I left because of the bigotry and hate. I work remotely and don’t have kids. That is the only thing stopping me.
Diversity leads to education opportunities and jobs. Hate and discrimination are the reason there are no jobs and shitty education. Please stop white washing our society. The hate is a cancer.
Look I’m from such a small Pennsylvania town. Rural Appalachian. Coal mines and specialty steel production most notably.
Both of you are right, and the problems feed back into each other to some extent.
After my family migrated west more than a decade ago, every single time we go back to PA to visit family, attend a funeral and so forth — it just keeps looking more and more run down. Honestly the place is a shit-hole nowadays. I’m sad to see my old county went for Trump by 70%. You couldn’t pay me enough to move my family back.
The young, educated, smart, and compassionate folks leave and GTFO asap — both for jobs, and for more diversity and tolerance. The sad part is I remember watching a slew of documentaries in the early 2000s forewarning of what would happen to these small-towns…
- Because of shipping manufacturing off elsewhere.
- Because of big box corporate eating up local shops, eroding community and draining out the money.
- Because administrations were unwilling to break the hard news that things like coal mines wouldn’t last forever and we’d have to help retrain and get them to new modern job sectors.
No doubt these communities feel the pressures they’re complaining about; they’ve just been exploited by right-wing media about who is responsible: the southern migrant more desperate than them, the trans, the homosexuals, the liberals, etc…
@FlyingSquid is also right that there is FAR more bigotry among these communities as well; and that ties back to not being well-traveled, our education system collapsing, and the right-wing fearmongering machine.
Edit: Shit, Inside Out 3 should be about being inside the head of a MAGA supporter.
Inside Out 3 should be about being inside the head of a MAGA supporter.
Pixar doesn’t make horror movies.
That was true of the small Ohio town I grew up in. Tons of anti-semitism, racism, hatred of non-straights, hatred of non-christians, etc. Most of the jobs were in agriculture and manufacturing. I no longer live in the US but, if I had to move back, I don’t think you could pay me enough to live in that place again.
I don’t think rural towns are depopulating due to hate or discrimination… it’s mostly because of job prospects, no?
With WFH I just need a small town with high speed internet. However, with kids, rural schools do not rank well.
I don’t have kids at home anymore, but have online schools become a thing yet?
Seems to me like that’s a huge opportunity to tailor school to every kid’s ability, though the socialization would suffer. But plenty of kids come out of homeschooling just fine.
Obviously my own experience is entirely anecdotal, but I think relevant to the point. I work 100% remotely, I just need a decent Internet connection. I currently live in a moderately sized city, and keeping up with the finances can be a struggle compared to the lower cost of rural living. However, I’m also a gay man, pro choice, I don’t care what two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their home, etc. etc. etc. with all the usual liberal stuff.
The job prospects aren’t why I left the rural southeastern US, and they aren’t the reason I’ll never go back there.
These people were warned about the brain drain their bullshit would cause. I have no sympathy for them or their towns’ dwindling tax revenues.
I don’t care what two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their home, etc. etc. etc.
So they can put what drugs they want in their own body?
with all the usual liberal stuff.
Oh, never mind.
There are two sides to the equation though - depopulation and repopulation. Hate and discrimination may not be causing (most of) the exodus, but inclusion and acceptance could be part of the solution. I’ve known more than a few people who have wanted to move to rural areas but have avoided them for exactly that reason. The braver ones have made the move, but only as a group able to support and protect each other.
It’s a combination of both. Young women don’t want to stay in these places because they all vote Republican and all republicans are hate filled bigots who view women as property.
The women leave for greener pastures, and the young men are left with no job prospects and no one to date. They get up and leave as well.
Since all these towns are hate filled trash heaps, no money gets invested into them. The farms are all corpo owned and don’t need the town, the Dollar General employs two people, and the used car lot has not sold anything in four years. There is nothing to do in these places except lie about being disabled (this is very different than having a real disability) sponge off the government, then watch Fox News all day and mald.
Were about to move to a smaller but more queer friendly town for this exact reason. My city seems indifferent at best, and I’d like to live somewhere that actually likes us.
We’re DINKs, we pay taxes, were good neighbors pretty much any way you look at it, but were visibly queer & barely feel tolerated here.
In what state is this ‘smaller but more queer friendly town?’ Because I’m guessing it’s not rural PA.
Its not haha, its Bloomington IN. I cannot believe how queer that lil town is, its amazing
Those rural people should start throwing cornstarch paint on stuff to raise awareness of this important issue
This is because of SOCIALISM! And if not Socialism it’s because of IMMIGRANTS WHO DON’T EVEN LIVE IN THESE COMMUNITIES! But it 100% is NOT due to Racism or Capitalism killing off Job Opportunities or Bigots or Catholics wanting to Legislate your Bedroom. No it’s DEFINITELY Communist Immigrants causing this!
Yeah, young folks are moving away because they’ve been indoctrinated in liberal college institutions and lured by a gay communist urban agenda to destroy rural America and bring about the decline of Christian conservative values! Nothing at all to do with capital consolidation and market monopolization resulting in reductions of diversified local markets and diminished job prospects! Increased cultural exposure due to accessing instantaneous global communications and social media? No way that has any influence in the decisions people make about what cultural environment they’d prefer to raise their children in. SmallTown USA is the best place to escape all the scary ideas that exist in the world, like equality among gender and race, and socializing the excesses of the private. Who would want to live in that kind of world?!
Remote work.
Build homes in the echoes of cities instead of gentrifying shit holes.
Repurpose the corporate offices into affordable housing to fix the growing homelessness problems.
Create less car dependent infrastructure
Make more high density areas car free, and build affordable housing over the parking areas.
Subsidize farms if they use green tech. Subsidize them more if they’re smaller to reincitiveize small farms.
Abolish any ability for any corporation from owning any land not zoned for corporate use. Corporations may not own homes.
Did I mention remote work?
Sadly, if you can remotely work from rural America, you can remotely work from rural India.
There are plenty of remote work jobs that are hiring globally now, not just the US or India. There are entire companies that are basically 100% ephemeral. Yes, it sucks for US workers that people in other countries are in the same job sandbox, but the jobs also exist. AI won’t change this either, you still need a person that knows the AI is belching out dogshit code, it’ll likely just reduce the number of code monkey jobs.
I’ve worked with India teams in 5 companies. Always bad. we need to rehire Americans to manage/oversight or redo. Ends up costing more. The code and website teams complaints never end but c level Don’t care.
End up bad, but for the first couple of quarters that “rock star” MBA has created huge short term profits. And is that what really matters in business these days…
the more subsidies, the more transparent EVERYTHING about their operation has to be
That’s been a general movement away from rural America for decades (and people have been leaving the countryside to make their fortune in the big city for centuries). However, this line stood out to me because of the timeframe cited:
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023.
Maybe I’m just still bitter, but maybe they should have tried social distancing, wearing masks, and getting vaccinated.
This is not limited to the United States either.
Urbanisation and the growth of cities is across the industrialised world.
For example, while Japan’s population shrinks, Tokyo is growing.
I wonder how far this will go - will the industrialized world see more ghost towns?
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.
This stood out to me as well, the conservative stance on C-19 and the resulting general negligence seems a very obvious major factor to the rural population decline in this timeframe.
