"Following Donald Trump's electoral victory, a new report from the Census Bureau details contrasts between America's city centers and outlying rural regions"
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| Age is one of many factors that divide rural and urban America, such as those outside the large urban centers tend to be older, according to new Census Bureau data. (Getty Images) |
Political analysts and mass media were collected separately following the victory of President-elect Donald Trump on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, in large part because some predicted Trump would amount to anything more than an also-ran.
One of the strongest criticisms and more regularly gave was that the experts and the country's political prognosticators were in contact with rural America - a region that represents the vast majority of the country's territory, but a smaller fraction of the population that the coast of the country.
Job growth has remained in these areas over the past few years, especially when compared with the arms of the labor market seen in many major American cities. Home values, likewise, have been slow to rebound in many regions outside urban centers following the collapse of the housing bubble. Thus, when economists and others have praised the 14 million new jobs created during the recovery, an unemployment rate that has fallen to the minimum post-recession and the value of the homes that have risen to historic highs, the message does not it seems to resonate with much of rural America.
Rather, the Trump gloomy assessment of the economy - which was regularly pooh-poohed by economists looking macroeconomic data - generally seemed to hit closer to home for this group. Even if voters turned out on election day for a lot of reasons not economic messages of the candidates, winning map of Trump shows was much more successful in Clinton woo rural voters and middle America.
Now, a new report from the Census Bureau offers a county-level glimpse of numbers-driven, urban-rural gap in the United States. It shows rural Americans, on average, are more likely to own a home, less likely to have obtained a university degree and more likely to have served in the armed forces than their urban counterparts.
latest statistics Bureau American Community Survey Bureau - data covering collected between 2011 and 2015 - shows that 47 million adults and 13.4 million children under the age of 18 lived in counties outside the large metropolitan areas of the United States. More than 81 percent of rural adults were homeowners, compared with 59.8 per cent of urban dwellers. Almost two-thirds, 65.4 percent, have lived in their country of birth, against 48.3 percent of city dwellers.
And less than 1 in 5 to 19.5 percent - had earned a bachelor's degree, shy of the mark 29 percent of urban America.
Overall, the report estimates less than 1 out of every five citizens has been a resident of rural America, although Census Bureau director John Thompson noted in a statement accompanying the report that these regions account for "97 percent of the nation's surface . "
Already in 1910, more than 54 percent of the country lived in a rural area. But with the growth of jobs in the urban centers constantly overcoming what has been seen in other parts of the country, Americans - especially those just starting out in their careers - have flocked to urban areas in droves.
As such, the report says that the median urban adult is six years younger than its rural counterpart 45 years compared with 51.
"If you look at the populations of both rural and urban America, we find a distribution with two peaks, the baby boomers in their 50s and 60s who form one, and 'Millennials' in their late teens and early 20s who form the second, "a group of census researchers wrote in a blog post analyzing the new data. "Although there are more people in the Millennial generation in urban areas, baby boomers make up the highest peak in the rural areas."
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| US cities have attracted younger Americans, while those in rural areas tend to be older. Source: Census Bureau |
City dwellers also earned nearly $ 54,300 in median household income each year, about $ 2,000 more than their rural counterparts. And rural employment was significantly skewed towards the production of goods, with over 20 percent of workers in the productive sectors or construction.
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| More than a fifth of rural employees working in educational services and health and social care support positions. Another work 12.1 percent in the manufacturing sector. Source: Census Bureau |
The urban poverty rate of 16 percent, meanwhile, was nearly 3 percentage points higher than in rural areas '13, 3 percent.
"For rural areas, the poverty rates ranging from the lowest (4.6 percent), Connecticut at the highest (21.9 percent), in New Mexico," the census researchers wrote in a post on blog apart. "The poverty rates for urban areas ranged from the lowest (8.7 percent), Alaska at the highest (24.9 percent), in Mississippi."
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| urban regions of the country have higher poverty rates than rural areas, according to the Census Bureau. Source: Census Bureau |
The bureau also provided an infographic for a more direct comparison between rural and urban America:
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