Nonmetro America had just over 51 million residents in July 2011, a 4.5 percent increase in population over the past decade. Population growth was very uneven across rural and small-town America. Over 1,000 nonmetro counties lost population between July 2010 and July 2011, some from net out-migration (more people moving away than moving in), some from natural decrease (more deaths than births), some from both. At the same time, population growth in over 350 nonmetro counties was higher than the national rate of 0.7 percent during 2010-11.

As a result of uneven population growth, the percentage of the U.S. population living in nonmetro areas is steadily declining. Today, nonmetro areas contain 16 percent of the U.S. population distributed across 75 percent of the land area, compared with 21 percent of the population (and over 80 percent of the land area) in 1990. The decline occurred for three reasons: metro areas experienced higher growth rates consistently since the 1970s; fast-growing nonmetro towns have been reclassified as metro by exceeding the 50,000 population threshold; and other fast-growing nonmetro counties became part of existing metro areas through suburban expansion.

The rate of population growth in nonmetro America slowed dramatically since the onset of the housing mortgage crisis in 2006 and the recession a year later.  Over 250,000 people were added to the nonmetro population between July 2005 and July 2006, compared with an average below 150,000 per year since then. Part of this reflects a decline in the rate of growth for the U.S. population as a whole, as a result of lower immigration rates since 2007. However, nonmetro counties have also been affected by lower rates of natural increase and fewer in-migrants from metro areas. After rates showed signs of converging in the early to mid 2000s, the gap between nonmetro and metro population growth widened considerably between 2006 and 2011.

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Last updated: Saturday, May 26, 2012

For more information contact: John Cromartie