Between 1950 and the present, the Office of Management and Budget took 552 counties out of rural America and reclassified them as metropolitan. Today some 70 million people, one-fourth of the U.S. population, live in what was rural America in 1950 but is considered urban America today. He spoke about how statistical records are kept and that the implication of this lesson from the 1950s is powerful. Much of today s rural America will be urban America in 2050. The cause is twofold.
Part is geographical destiny, the result of being near metropolitan areas.
The other is the result of successful rural economic development centered on small cities and leading to growth, Isserman explained. As they grow in employment and population, whatever the cause, rural areas cross the statistical divide of the Office of Management and Budget. They become metropolitan areas and disappear from the statistics and roll call of rural America. Isserman offered three conclusions. First, he suggests that rural America on the whole has done very well over the past half century and that prospects are good that it will continue to do so.