Political analyst says rural areas counties don't seem to be declining, but sometimes reality looks different - Entrepreneur Generations

Political blogger Kevin Drum from Mother Jones has written several interesting pieces about the rural-urban divide this week, partly inspired by Andrew Van Dam's recent piece in The Washington Post about rural population decline. Van Dam posited that rural population is said to be declining partly because many rural counties that grow are reclassified as metropolitan.

In his first piece, Drum explored why so many rural people reported feeling left behind by the booming economy. He noted that, when adjusted for inflation, overall out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in the U.S. has remained about the same since 2005, and not because people are putting off needed care. Part of the problem is that people aren't adjusting for inflation when they consider rising health care expenditures. Out of pocket spending is "up by about a third since 2005, and that’s what people see. They don’t realize that this is almost all due to inflation, which means there’s been no real rise," Drum writes.

Drum notes that, though tuition and childcare are more expensive, almost no other major expenses have increased since 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But some of those calculations hinge on how the BLS calculates value. With cars, computers, and other tech-based expenses, BLS figures you're getting way more bang for your buck because of advances in technology. "The price of computers, for example, hasn’t literally gone down 95 percent since 2000. They’ve probably gone down by about half, but we’re getting a whole lot more computer for that money," Drum writes. "Roughly speaking, the BLS figures that a 2000-era computer . . . that cost $1,000 back then would cost about 50 bucks these days if anyone bothered to make it. That’s where the 95 percent decrease comes from."

In a second piece, Drum compares unemployment and median household income rates among urban, rural, and very rural counties. Because there are so many conflicting definitions of rural, he created his own rubric based on population density, then refined it in a third piece. He found that the median income in rural counties was about $25,000 lower than in the largest counties, but that median income was growing faster in rural areas than in urban areas.

Drum compared population trends among those same rural and urban counties and found that the rural counties aren't losing population, though they aren't growing as quickly as urban counties. The U.S. Census Bureau, he notes, overestimated urban populations and underestimated rural populations from 2000-2010. "So for ten years it really did look like rural areas were losing population. This spawned a lot of nail-biting commentary, but it was all based on a miscalculation," Drum writes. "This is happening again right now, but we won’t know until after the 2020 census if it’s real, or just another miscalcuation."

Though it's true that some rural areas are having a hard time, Drum writes that "rural areas, on average, just don’t appear to be in big trouble. Their incomes are growing; their populations are stable; and their unemployment level is about the same as in urban areas. Unless I’m missing something—always a possibility!—we should stop pretending otherwise."

However, in his first piece, Drum acknowledges that what's on paper doesn't always translate to lived experiences: "If you live in a rural area, your income might be comparable to that of a city dweller once you account for the cost of living. But you’re still surrounded by signs of decay. You’re still surrounded by the reality of your brightest kids fleeing every year after high school graduation because their opportunities are better elsewhere. You’re still surrounded (perhaps) by an opioid epidemic. You’re still surrounded by an ever-growing number of single mothers who struggle to raise their kids on one income."

from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2Xe9cTO Political analyst says rural areas counties don't seem to be declining, but sometimes reality looks different - Entrepreneur Generations

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