SYSTEMS
INVOLVED
Politics
Recent government policy didn't start it, but it has exacerbated and accelerated a tragedy that has taken generations to play out. Trade wars and tariffs are negatively impacting farmers all across the U.S. Trade wars with China, for example, have significantly hurt U.S. farmers because of the Chinese retaliatory tariffs. China has other suppliers for agricultural crops such as Brazil and Argentina, and it has left U.S. farmers with rising inventories and plummeting crop prices. China was one of the biggest export destinations for U.S. agricultural products from 2009 to 2017, and in 2017 alone, Chinese buyers imported $19.5 billion in farm goods. That number dropped to $9.1 billion in 2018, a 53% decrease, as a direct result of the tariffs and trade war. Moreover, research from Trade Partnership Worldwide projected in February 28 that tariffs on U.S. exports could cost the country's agricultural sector anywhere from 59,000 to 71,000 jobs over the next two years.
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Additionally, the government heavily subsidizes the farming industry, yet these subsidies act like a regressive tax that promote large agribusiness, not poor rural farmers. Between 1995 and 2017, the top 1% of farms received 26% of the payments, averaging out to about $1.7 million per company. Contrarily, 62% of U.S. farms didn't receive any subsidies.
Source: USDA Foreign Agriculture Service
Economy
Urban migration has had extremely negative effects on rural economies, leaving communities with little job growth and heightened poverty rates. Automation and increased global competition have slowly eroded agriculture and extraction economies, and the rural job market is 4.26% smaller than it was in 2008. In the first four years of recovery after the 2008 recession, counties with fewer than 100,000 people lost 17,500 businesses. By contrast, by 2017, the largest metropolitan areas had almost 10 percent more jobs than they did at the start of the financial crisis. As a result, rural communities are plagued with poverty and struggle to make economic improvements.
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Though the urban rural poverty gap has shrunk in recent years, rural areas still lag behind from a series of interdependent issues that hinder the local economy including poor public transportation, uneven broadband coverage, affordable housing, and the centralization and concentration of local economies on farming and agriculture. More about the economic effects of rural depopulation can be explained here.
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Source: USDA, Economic Research Service
Education
Rural depopulation and urban migration has adversely impacted education levels in these areas. The overall education attainment of rural citizens has increased over time, but it still lags far behind that of urban areas. The college completion gap between rural and urban areas can be attributed to a number of causes. First, rural household income trails urban household income by nearly 20-25 percent, making college less affordable for families in rural areas. Geographic distance may add another cost burden to attending college for young people growing up in rural areas. ​
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Education levels correlate directly with earnings and economic outcomes, so poverty is both a cause and consequence of lower education levels in rural America. According to the USDA, in 2015, median earnings in rural areas were a mere fraction of those in urban areas for every level of education, with a substantially larger earnings gap at the highest levels of education. Median earnings for rural working adults with a high school diploma were $29,240 in 2017, which was nearly $7,000 more than the median earnings for rural working adults without a diploma or equivalent. Additionally, the urban-rural earnings gap increases by level of educational attainment. It is lowest, about $900, for those with less than a high school diploma, and is largest, nearly $18,000, for those with a graduate degree.
Source: USDA, Economic Research Service
