Could Inflation Spur an Urban Rebound?

“Inflation is crippling rural America and driving some people to consider moving closer to cities in an effort to ease the financial stress,” reports Ben Abrams for MPR News.

Abrams cites Iowa State University professor Dave Peters to preset this idea. Peters recently published research on the impact of inflation on rural household expenses between June 2020 and 2022, finding inflation far outpacing income increases in the rural United States—9.2 percent to 2.6 percent, respectively.

According to Peters, rural residents feel the effect of inflation mostly due to the cost of gas and the need to travel long distances to access the resources and services of daily need.

“His analysis found it costs rural households $2,500 more a year to pay for gasoline than it did two years ago. At the same time, prices are also rising for health insurance, veterinarian care, and fuel to heat homes,” explains Abrams.

But whether that inflation pressure is enough to drive rural residents to the city is another question. While many mainstream national media outlets are pushing the narrative of downtowns and big cities searching for a solution to population loss [paywall], and many data sources are providing nuanced evidence of the scale of the pandemic-era urban exodus, Peters dares to suggest that if inflation doesn’t recede soon, rural residents will have to reconsider their lifestyles.

"There are people that I've talked to in Iowa and in Nebraska ... that are really trying to do that financial calculation," says Peters in the article. "They would love to work and get city wages, but they can't commute. It's too expensive with the gas prices. And really, the thing that's holding them back is the cost of homes."