Pockets of Youth in Rural America

Most of rural America is getting older. But not all of it.

1 minute read

July 27, 2010, 6:00 AM PDT

By Nate Berg


The Daily Yonder offers a few maps of demographic information to show what parts of rural America are seeing actual increases in young populations.

"The map above does have some striking exceptions to the rural-is-getting-older story. Counties in West Texas, the Panhandle and Oklahoma showed patches of green, indicating an increasing percentage of the population being young. So did isolated counties in the Mountain West.

Urban, rural and exurban counties all got older this decade. The chart below shows the shift in the population under 45 this decade. Rural counties had the lowest percentage of young people in 2000, and that continues to be the case in 2009."

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 in The Daily Yonder

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