page_title: Rural area
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Rural area / North America / United States
caption_attribution_description: Mount Shasta
context_page_description: In general, a rural area or countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines the word rural as encompassing "...all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area. Whatever is not urban is considered rural."
  Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas are commonly rural, as are other types of areas such as forests. Different countries have varying definitions of rural for statistical and administrative purposes.
context_section_description: 84% of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas, but cities occupy only 10 percent of the country. Rural areas (villages) occupy the remaining 90 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau, the USDA's Economic Research Service, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have come together to help define rural areas. United States Census Bureau: The Census Bureau definitions (new to the 2000 census), which are based on population density, defines rural areas as all territory outside Census Bureau-defined urbanized areas and urban clusters. 
  An urbanized area consists of a central surrounding areas whose population ("urban nucleus") is greater than 50,000. They may or may not contain individual cities with 50,000 or more; rather, they must have a core with a population density generally exceeding 1,000 persons per square mile; and may contain adjoining territory with at least 500 persons per square mile (other towns outside an urbanized area whose population exceeds 2,500).
  Thus, rural areas comprise open country and settlements with fewer than 2,500 residents; areas designated as rural can have population densities as high as 999 per square mile or as low as 1 person per square mile.
  USDA
  The USDA's Office of Rural Development may define rural by various population thresholds. The 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107–171, Sec. 6020) defined rural and rural area as any area other than (1) a city or town that has a population of greater than 50,000 inhabitants, and (2) the urbanized areas contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town.
  The rural-urban continuum codes, urban influence code, and rural county typology codes developed by USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) allow researchers to break out the standard metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas into smaller residential groups. For example, a metropolitan county is one that contains an urbanized area, or one that has a twenty-five percent commuter rate to an urbanized area regardless of population.
  OMB:
  Under the Core Based Statistical Areas used by the OMB (commonly referred to as 'CBSA Codes'), 
  a metropolitan county, or Metropolitan Statistical Area,(MSA) consists of (1) central counties with one or more urbanized areas (as defined by the Census Bureau) and (2) outlying counties that are economically tied to the core counties as measured by worker commuting data (i.e. if 25% of workers living there commute to the core counties, or if 25% of the employment in the county consists of workers coming from the central counties).
  Non-metro counties are outside the boundaries of metro areas and are further subdivided into Micropolitan Statistical Areas centered on urban clusters of 10,000–50,000 residents, and all remaining non-core counties.
  In 2014, the USDA updated their rural / non-rural area definitions based on the 2010 Census counts.
caption: A rural landscape near Mount Shasta in California
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