Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2017
Rural America can only be defined as non-urban America. It includes nearly all of America's land area and is home for over one-fourth of the nation's people. Although some rural areas are very prosperous and even in the not-so-prosperous regions, some individuals and families have succeeded in their economic endeavors, there seems always to have been an inordinate amount of poverty and a slow erosion of opportunity-generating activity in many or, more likely, most rural regions.
Was on leave with the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, when this paper was written.