With the election of 2016, the dam holding back this mounting tide of rural resentment has broken, and in its wake we have two Americas cast upon opposite ends of the political spectrum. Donald Trump, perhaps the most citified candidate in American political history, ran a campaign that denigrated cities and the people who have historically lived in them. But it worked—and he won the votes of rural U.S. counties (and some small urban ones) overwhelmingly. Hillary Clinton, who dominated big cities and grabbed the national popular vote, still lost the election. [...]
The Census defines “rural” as anything that exists outside of “urban clusters” with upwards of 2,500 residents or “urban areas” with 50,000 or more.
Around 78 percent of residents in these areas identify as white. The remaining segment contains a mix of races and ethnicities—Native Americans, African Americans in the South, and Mexicans near the US.-Mexico border, along with seasonal workers from other parts of Latin America. Some rural counties in Texas, North Carolina, Idaho, and Kansas have large concentration of immigrants. In Gaines County, Texas, for example, foreign-born residents make up 24 percent of the population. What’s often overlooked is that these sub-groups have their own set of economic and social challenges that are seldom discussed in the larger conversation about rural neglect. [...]
Sixty percent of the rural population lives east of the Mississippi, and almost half lives in the South. The most rural states aren’t lonely and lightly populated Alaska or Wyoming but two New England states: Vermont and Maine. [...]
Overall, rural families are earning as much as urban ones. Median household income in the country is $52,386, compared to $54,296 for city families. But rural poverty levels are lower—only 13.3 percent compared to 16 percent in cities.
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