Rural and Small-Town America: A Century Of Transformation

11/19/2002

From: Ellen Carnevale of the Population Reference Bureau, 202-939-5407

News Advisory:

-- When: Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2002; 12 noon to 1:30 p.m.

-- Where: Population Reference Bureau, 1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 520, Washington, DC 20009

-- Speaker: Calvin Beale, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

At the dawn of the 20th century, rural America was a traditional agrarian society, molded at its best in the populist image of the Homestead Act and at its worst in the sharecropping legacy of pre-Civil War slavery. By 2000, rural and small-town America had transformed into a society where a small but remarkably productive minority is engaged in agriculture, a much larger group works in manufacturing, and increasing numbers of people are in the service-oriented work that has come to characterize the nation at large. Yet, there is a great deal of diversity within rural areas.

Some rural areas are growing rapidly and could not stem the growth if they tried; others struggle with continued population loss and lack of employment.

The ways in which rural and small-town America have changed, as well as the population trends that both stem from this change and continue to shape it, will be the subject of the Population Reference Bureau's November Policy Seminar, to be held on Nov. 20 at PRB's office in Washington, DC. Calvin Beale, senior demographer at the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, is the featured speaker. Mr. Beale has conducted rural demographic research at the Dept. of Agriculture since 1953 and previously was at the U.S. Census Bureau. His work has focused on farm and rural population trends, rural-urban migration, ethnic minorities, and regional studies. For this work, he has received the Distinguished Service Award from the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. Beale is co-author of the census monograph "Rural and Small Town America," and a collected volume of his writings has just been reissued by Penn State Press.