TheFirstFurrow

Wednesday, July 13, 2016 One Way to Think About Rural-Urban Interdependence

Written by Dr. Rebecca Tippett and originally published at Carolina Demography. This continues our series of posts highlighting some of Rebecca’s excellent insights into rural North Carolina. If you missed last week’s post, be sure to go back and check it out as well.

“The growth of urban places historically has been fueled largely by in-migration from rural areas (including from other countries)…” – Daniel Lichter & David Brown, “Rural America in an Urban Society

Nearly half of North Carolina’s counties – 47 of 100 – had net out-migration between 2010 and 2015, meaning more people moved away than moved in.

There are some clear patterns to this movement. The core counties of the state’s major metropolitan areas—such as Guilford (Greensboro), Forsyth (Winston-Salem), Mecklenburg (Charlotte), and Wake (Raleigh)—saw net in-migration. In general, the counties immediately adjacent to these core counties, such as Johnston and Harnett south of Wake, also experienced net in-migration. In addition, regions that are generally attractive to retirees, such as Western North Carolina and the coastal counties, have had net in-migration since 2010.

Net Out Migration

Meanwhile, many of the counties that have experienced net out-migration are on the periphery of larger metro areas, are located in smaller metropolitan or micropolitan regions, or are rural counties, meaning they belong to neither a metropolitan nor micropolitan region. (A map of North Carolina’s metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas is available here and the delineation files are available here.)

But even though many counties have experienced net out-migration, North Carolina is a “sticky” state. Most people born here still live here. Among North Carolina-born adults, 72% still live here, the highest share of any other state except for Texas. And, when we look at individuals who move out of their county, individuals from rural, outlying, and micropolitan counties are much more likely to stay in North Carolina.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016 The Persistent “Rurality” of North Carolina

Written by Dr. Rebecca Tippett and originally published at Carolina Demography. Over the next few weeks the First Furrow will be highlighting some of Rebecca’s excellent insights into rural North Carolina.

As we’ve mentioned in the past, North Carolina has a large population residing in areas that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies as rural. Among the 10 most populous states, North Carolina has the largest proportion of individuals living in rural areas. In fact, North Carolina’s rural population is larger than that of any other state except for Texas.

Prior to coming to Carolina Demography, I worked in a similar role producing and interpreting demographic data in Virginia. Since returning to North Carolina, I have mentioned to a number of people that North Carolina is more “demographically interesting” in certain respects than Virginia. This isn’t to say that Virginia isn’t interesting –it is!—but the fundamental patterns of demographics are markedly different in Virginia compared to North Carolina. And some of this difference is rooted in the higher proportion of individuals living in high density, urbanized areas in Virginia.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Round One of Voting: The Bond Passed, No Big Surprises, and the Impact of Urbanization

Unlike the NCAA basketball tournament, the first round of North Carolina elections—last week’s primary—didn’t result in big upsets or surprises. The council of state races held as projected and, for the most part, incumbents in the state house and senate will be moving on to their general elections or returning to Raleigh for the 2017 long session.

Today, instead of analyzing individual races across the state, we will focus on the Farm Bureau-supported Connect NC Bond results and discuss a few voting trends that continue to emerge in urban and rural areas. (If you’re interested in learning about those other races, we highly recommended you read the NC Free Enterprise Foundation’s post-primary briefing.)