Rural Definitions

Note: Updates to this data product are discontinued. 

Methods of designating the urban periphery range from the use of municipal boundaries to definitions based on counties. Definitions based on municipal boundaries may classify as rural much of what would typically be considered suburban. Definitions that delineate the urban periphery based on counties may include extensive segments of a county that many would consider rural.

We have selected a representative set of nine alternative rural definitions and compare social and economic indicators from the 2000 decennial census across the nine definitions. We chose socioeconomic indicators (population, education, poverty, etc.) that are commonly used to highlight differences between urban and rural areas.