The atlas is an online mapping tool that captures a broad range of demographic, economic and agricultural data on rural areas across the United States. The Atlas of Rural and Small-town America, developed by USDA’s Economic Research Service, provides county-level mapping of more than 60 statistical indicators depicting conditions and trends across different types of non-metropolitan regions.
“The new atlas will complement USDA’s efforts in promoting rural development and well-being by helping policy makers pinpoint the needs of particular regions, recognize their diversity, and build on their assets,” said Vilsack. “The atlas is part of a broad USDA initiative to make relevant data easily accessible to the public, including researchers, journalists, public officials, and other professionals.”
Nearly 50 million people – 17 percent of the U.S. population – live in non-metropolitan America, covering approximately 2,000 counties. Economic and social challenges facing rural areas and small towns differ greatly from those affecting larger U.S. cities and vary substantially from one nonmetro county to the next.
The atlas allows users to geographically compare selected states or regions using data on population, age structure, race and ethnicity, income, employment, agricultural well-being, and other measures. Maps can be filtered to show only counties of a certain type, such as those with high levels of manufacturing or with persistent poverty. For example, this option could be used to show high unemployment in manufacturing-dependent counties.
This web-based product assembles the latest county-level statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, USDA, and other federal sources. Of particular note, the atlas incorporates data from the first full set of county-level data in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). Data from the various agencies are combined in four broad categories that users can select:
- People—county demographic profiles, including age, race/ethnicity, education, family composition, population change, migration, and immigration.
- Jobs—conditions and trends affecting the labor force, such as employment change, unemployment, industry, and occupational structure.
- Agriculture—indicators of farm structure and the well-being of farm households, including farm size, income, sales, and tenure.
- County typologies—ERS county classifications based on the rural-urban continuum, economic structure, and other key locational features, such as, landscape amenities, occupation types, persistent poverty, or population-loss status.
Users can click on a county and view a pop-up box showing data on all the indicators in each of these four categories. In addition, users can view an indicator (e.g., employment data) for the entire country, or they can zoom into specific regions, states, or sub-state areas and pan across the U.S. at different scales on the map. Maps can be downloaded for use in documents and presentations, and data are accessible via downloadable spreadsheets.
Go to the Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America [1]