Education is a key driver of economic prosperity for people and
places and is associated with higher earnings and lower
unemployment rates. Improving education may also be an effective
economic development strategy for rural communities and regions.
Counties with higher levels of educational attainment among the
working-age population are less likely to be persistently poor or
experience low employment rates. Much of rural America struggles to
find effective ways to raise education and skill levels in places
where low-wage labor markets have been persistent features of the
economic landscape.
Educational Attainment in Rural America
Educational attainment varies across places and demographic
groups, increasing to varying degrees over time in both
nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) and metropolitan (metro) areas. In
nonmetro areas, the high school graduation rate for adults age 25
and older increased from 76.5 percent in 2000 to 82.5 percent over
2006-10. Nonetheless, the nonmetro high school completion
rate remains below the 85.5 percent completion rate achieved in
metro areas. While more adults are attending and completing
college, nonmetro areas lag behind metro areas. The share of adults
with a bachelor's or postgraduate degrees grew by 2.4 percentage
points to 17.5 percent in nonmetro areas, compared with a 3.6
percentage point increase to 30 percent in metro areas. The college
completion gap partly reflects the concentration of high-skill jobs
in metro areas.
Education and Economic Outcomes
Earnings rise considerably with educational attainment. In
nonmetro areas, the difference in median earnings between adult
workers with a high school diploma and those without was $6,934
during 2006-10. Similarly, the earnings difference between a worker
holding a bachelor's degree and those with some college but no more
than an associate's degree was $10,368. The difference in median
earnings between successive levels of educational attainment was
higher in metro areas than nonmetro areas, reflecting higher
returns to education in metro areas.
Median earnings for the employed population age 25 and older,
by educational attainment, 2006-10
|
Educational attainment
|
Metropolitan
areas
|
Nonmetropolitan
areas
|
|
Median
|
Incremental
difference
|
Median
|
Incremental difference
|
|
Less than a high school diploma
|
$19,700
|
---
|
$18,338
|
---
|
|
High school diploma or equivalent
|
$28,028
|
$8,328
|
$25,272
|
$6,934
|
|
Some college or associate's degree
|
$34,799
|
$6,771
|
$29,159
|
$3,887
|
|
Bachelor's degree
|
$50,047
|
$15,248
|
$39,527
|
$10,368
|
|
Graduate or professional degree
|
$65,618
|
$15,571
|
$50,858
|
$11,331
|
Note: Values are median earnings in the past 12 months in 2010
inflation-adjusted dollars.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey,
2006-10.
Unemployment rates also remain lower for those with more
educational attainment partly as a result of an increasing demand
for more highly-skilled labor. In 2011, the unemployment rate
for nonmetro adults age 25 and older without a high school diploma
was 13.1 percent. Unemployment rates were lowest for adults with a
bachelor's degree or higher (3.4 percent) in nonmetro areas. Metro
areas showed slightly higher unemployment rates than nonmetro areas
during and after the most recent recession across all educational
attainment categories.
Low-Education Counties
To capture the wide geographic variation in rural educational
attainment, ERS has defined low-education
counties as those where at least 1 out of every 4 adults
between 25 and 64 years of age had not completed high school. (Educational
attainment data for all U.S. counties can be found here). In
2000, 622 low-education counties were identified--499 nonmetro and
123 metro counties. Nearly 9 out of 10 low-education counties were
located in the South, including a majority of those with
historically large shares of Blacks and Hispanics. In the West,
low-education counties showed a similar concentration in areas with
large ethnic minority populations.
More than half of all nonmetro low-education counties are
persistently poor or have low employment rates. Key geographic
concentrations of rural low-education counties closely track
similar concentrations of persistent poverty and low employment
from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the Rio Grande Valley.
Nearly half of the remaining nonmetro low-education
counties-neither persistently poor nor with low employment-are
dependent on manufacturing. The relative prosperity of these
counties is due largely to factory jobs that provide less-educated
workers with stable work at family-sustaining wages. The long term
decline in manufacturing, however, may present a significant
challenge to the future economic well-being of this group of
low-education counties.