Rural areas remain in persistent decline as economic shift drains jobs and people
By David Swenson, Associate Scientist of Economics, Iowa State University Since the Great Recession, most of the nation’s rural counties have struggled to recover lost jobs and retain their people. The story is markedly different in the nation’s largest urban communities. Across the Midwest, every four years presidential hopefuls swoop in to test how voters might respond to their various ideas for fixing the country’s problems. But what to do about rural economic and persistent population decline is the one area that has always confounded them all. The facts are clear and unarguable. Most of the nation’s smaller urban...
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