People residing in areas served by three USDA broadband programs tended to be more rural, less educated, poorer, and older than those in areas not served
Little to no published research exists to help address the uneven access to broadband—often called the digital divide—in the United States. This report addresses this information gap by focusing on the areas and customers served by three USDA broadband programs: the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), the Community Connect Grant Program, and the ReConnect Program. The study found that all three programs reached larger shares of people in micropolitan, small town, and rural census tracts than in metro tracts, consistent with the rural focus of these programs. In terms of funds obligated during the period studied (FY 2009 through FY 2021), the BIP was the largest of the three programs. The BIP was also much larger than the other two programs in terms of the population reached by the program.
The U.S. rural population is growing again after a decade of overall population loss, with growth of approximately a quarter percent from 2020 to 2022
Webinar: https://www.ers.usda.gov/newsroom/events/2023/11/16/webinar-rural-america-at-a-glance-2023-edition
Rural America at a Glance is an annual USDA, Economic Research Service report that highlights recent social and economic conditions in rural areas of the United States. This edition focuses on population, poverty, and labor trends. After a decade of overall loss, the U.S. rural population is growing again, with growth of approximately a quarter percent from 2020 to 2022. The rural population is also experiencing declines in poverty, with 9.7 percent fewer rural counties in 2021 experiencing persistent poverty compared with a decade earlier. Still, more than half of extremely low-income rural renter households experienced housing insecurity. Rural employment levels and annual growth rates have nearly returned to levels seen prior to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The difference between age-adjusted natural-cause mortality rates in rural and urban populations grew from 6 percent higher in rural areas in 1999 to 20 percent higher in rural areas in 2019
Mortality rates can help measure the overall health and wellness of a particular age group, county, or region. Although recent attention has been given to external factors associated with mortality, such as suicide and accidental overdoses, deaths due to natural causes continue to outnumber deaths due to external factors. The 2019 age-adjusted natural-cause mortality (NCM) rate for the prime working-age population (aged 25–54) was 43 percent higher in rural areas than in urban areas. This is a shift from 25 years ago when NCM rates in urban and rural areas were similar for this age group. As a first step to understanding the increasing gap between rural and urban NCM rates, this report examines natural (disease-related) deaths for prime working-age adults in rural and urban areas between 1999 and 2019 using data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
New ERS data product provides users with a time series of well-established poverty area measures at comparable county and census tract geographies
USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) is the lead Federal statistical agency for research and statistics on the rural economy. Since at least the 1960s, poverty-area measures developed by ERS have been relied upon to target, implement, and monitor Federal, State, and local government programs designed to support a broad range of initiatives. This report provides details on the new Poverty Area Measures (PAM) data product, an online resource created and routinely updated by ERS. PAM contains four measures of areawide poverty (high, extreme, persistent, and enduring) that can be used to better understand the geography of poverty in the United States from 1960 onward. PAM allows users to investigate poverty areas at the county and census tract levels, individually or in combination, and provides the geocoding necessary to merge the measures with other relevant indicators from most Federal data sources.