This report summarizes population redistribution trends in the rural and small town communities that are an important part of the social, economic and political fabric of the country. Nonmetropolitan, or rural, America contains over 75 percent of the land area and 17 percent of the U.S. population. What happens in rural America has important policy implications for the fifty million residents who live there and the nation as a whole.
https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=carsey