what is rural?
According to official U.S. Census Bureau definitions, rural areas comprise open country and settlements with fewer than 2,500 residents. Urban areas comprise larger places and densely settled areas around them. Urban areas do not necessarily follow municipal boundaries. They are essentially densely settled territory as it might appear from the air. Most counties, whether metropolitan or nonmetropolitan, contain a combination of urban and rural populations.

Urban areas are of two types—urbanized areas and urban clusters—identical in the criteria used to delineate them but different in size. The Census Bureau defines an urbanized area wherever it finds an urban nucleus of 50,000 or more people. They may or may not contain any individual cities of 50,000 or more (152 currently do not). In general, they must have a core with a population density of 1,000 persons per square mile and may contain adjoining territory with at least 500 persons per square mile. Urbanized areas have been delineated using the same basic threshold (50,000 population) for each decennial census since 1950, but procedures for delineating the urban fringe are more liberal today. In 2000, 68 percent of Americans lived in 452 urbanized areas.

The same computerized procedures and population density criteria are used to identify urban clusters of at least 2,500 but less than 50,000 persons. This delineation of built-up territory around small towns and cities is new for the 2000 census. In 2000, 11 percent of the U.S. population lived in 3,158 urban clusters.

According to this system, rural areas consist of all territory located outside of urbanized areas and urban clusters. The U.S. rural population was 59 million (21 percent) in 2000.

ERS researchers and others who discuss conditions in "rural" America most often refer to conditions in nonmetropolitan areas. Metropolitan (metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas are defined on the basis of counties. Counties are typically active political jurisdictions, usually have programmatic importance at the Federal and State level, and estimates of population, employment, and income are available for them annually. They are also frequently used as basic building blocks for areas of economic and social integration.

Metro and nonmetro areas are defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In 2003, OMB defined metro areas as (1) central counties with one or more urbanized areas, and (2) outlying counties that are economically tied to the core counties as measured by work commuting. Outlying counties are included if 25 percent of workers living in the county commute to the central counties, or if 25 percent of the employment in the county consists of workers coming out from the central counties—the so-called "reverse" commuting pattern. Nonmetro counties are outside the boundaries of metro areas and are further subdivided into two types: micropolitan areas, centered on urban clusters of 10,000 or more persons, and all remaining "noncore" counties.

Federal data for certain social and economic characteristics of counties are available on an annual basis, some even more frequently. In contrast, data on the characteristics of rural and urban residents are available only from the decennial censuses. Using population counts from the 2000 Census, the following table shows the number of residents of rural and urban areas versus nonmetro and metro areas. There were 59.1 million rural residents in 2000, a little less than half (49 percent) of whom lived in nonmetro counties. There were 49.2 million nonmetro county residents, 59 percent of whom lived in rural areas. Metro county residents are preponderantly urban area residents—91 percent. Overall, 17 percent of the national population lived in nonmetro counties and 21 percent lived in rural areas in 2000. For the first time, a slight majority of rural people now live in metro areas.

Table 1. Comparison of residency patterns for new rural-urban and metro-nonmetro definitions

NA=Not applicable.
Note: New urban-rural definitions, based on the 2000 decennial census, were released in May 2002; new metro-nonmetro definitions were released in June 2003.
Source: Calculated by ERS from 2000 Census of Population data.

for more information, contact: John Cromartie
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page updated: August 21, 2003