An entire economic system cannot be understood unless there is reliable knowledge about both rural and urban sectors, including their interactions. In particular, there are two anomalies that cannot be rationalized satisfactorily by existing economic theory: the decentralizing economic...

Poverty rates are highest in the most urban and most rural areas of the United States, and are higher in non-metropolitan (nonmetro) than metropolitan (metro) areas, yet rural poverty remains relatively obscured from mainstream political and popular attention. This fact has motivated...

Was local job growth a significant determinant of poverty reduction between 1990 and 2000? This research takes advantage of newly available data and techniques to explore the job growth on tract-level poverty reduction. Spatial corrections to the model allow for more accurate identification of...

Rural America is a diverse landscape ranging from rapidly growing amenity rich communities to struggling resource-based towns and villages. A key feature is that rural population growth quickly tails off for rural communities more distant from urban centers. A long period of higher energy prices...

We often use the term rural very loosely when discussing public policy. Rarely do we describe explicitly the kinds of places we have in mind for particular programs and craft precise eligibility requirements that deliver the programs to those places without expensive leakages to other,...

State governments that have elected to make investments to increase the availability of affordable broadband service in rural areas and low income urban neighborhoods should organize their efforts around a strategy that encourages and leverages locally- driven initiatives, rather than follow a...