Public Policies for Rural America: Legacies or Leading Edges?

For the purposes of this paper I find it convenient to think in terms of three types of programs: (1) those that are specifically directed toward rural issues; (2) those that are essentially rural in character but are not explicitly limited to the rural setting; and (3) programs that have no particular geographic focus but have impacted in varying degrees on the rural population. A large share of the public programs that relate most directly to rural people address needs of the agricultural sector. Many were enacted during an era in which the agricultural economy was depressed or threatening to become so. Agriculture and rural were nearly synonymous. In the early 1930's a large share of the total rural population was engaged in farming. Most of the remainder were indirectly linked to agriculture through employment in farm service, supply, and marketing activities. It is also noteworthy that responsibility for implementing a majority of these programs was lodged in a single federal agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In more recent years nonagricultural needs of rural areas have begun to attract the attention of public policy makers. Though these programs have not been limited exclusively to rural areas, their expenditures have been proportionately greater there as a result of program design. This list includes the Economic Development Administration projects; the Appalachian Regional Commission; Hill-Burton hospitals; the housing, water, and sewer programs of the Farmers Home Administrati n; the Department of Housing and Urban Development's nonmetropolitan comprehenive planning program; Corps of Engineers projects; the rural loan programs of the Economic Opportunity Act; and Small Business Administration programs. Finally, there is a third and much larger set of programs which, while not expressly designed for rural needs, have had some impact upon the rural population. The list is far too long to detail here but includes such authorizations as Medicare and Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Program, the Interstate Highway System, Civil Rights, and Social Security. The evaluation of public policy-even one small piece of one act-is no small task. If our experience with planning, programming and budgeting systems (PPBS) in the Federal Government has given us anything, it has been an even healthier respect for the complexities and hazards of meaningful program evaluation. But at the risk of oversimplifying I believe one can identify some overall forces at work within these programs that reflect on their performance. First, the programs designed exclusively for rural needs have generally been preoccupied with the aims of improved production efficiency and economic adjustment of the firm and the industry. Program benefits have been linked principally to land and capital resources. Second, these particular programs performed rather well. There is substantial agreement among students of the subject that the farm programs developed in the 1930's and continued in varying forms to the present day stabilized an inherently unstable agricultural economy and thereby contributed in some measure to the orderly growth of the overall national economy. Such policies had the additional side effect of stimulating the rate of adoption of new technology, thereby releasing resources, principally labor, for employment in other socially useful endeavors. Unfortunately, not all of these resources were in the appropriate form or place for nonfarm employment, and * All views expressed in this paper are my own and should not be interpreted as the official policy of any federal agency. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Michael Brewer, William Motes, and Derek Schoen.