Rural Growth Slows Down

Rural America is again undergoing difficult and sometimes painful economic change. After a decade of growth, rural income, population, and overall economic activity have stalled and are again lagging behind urban trends. Most important, the rural slowdown seems to be caused by factors other than the normal ups and downs in the business cycle: factors like deregulation of banking and transportation, international competition, and financial problems in U.S. agriculture. The only nonmetro counties that continued robust income growth since 1979 have been those depending on retirement, government, and trade (about a third of all rural counties).