Rural America has 80 percent of US land and 17 percent of US residents, 50 million. In many rural counties, the influx of retired newcomers has created strains, since they do not have children in school and may be reluctant to approve tax increases to support local schools.

As property prices rise, service workers may be forced to commute from lower-cost areas to wealthier areas over country roads. Many of the new and wealthy retired residents understand the political process, which can increase tensions when they stop further development that would create jobs in order to preserve the environment that attracted them.

The Wall Street Journal on January 19, 2008 explored the "gentrification" of parts of rural America, which has the potential to transform rural economies from resource-based to aesthetic-based. Valley County, Idaho, about 100 miles from Boise, is getting $1 million homes. Jobs serving wealthy second-home owners replaced declining timber and farm jobs; some residents work at the nearby Tamarack ski resort.

The US has 3,141 counties, including 2,051 rural or nonmetro counties that are outside the primary daily commuting range of urbanized areas with at least 50,000 residents and about 800 metro counties. The Census defines rural areas as those with no places of 2,500 or more residents. After the 2000 Census, there were 30 million people in metro counties living in Census-defined rural places. About 400 of these metro counties, many in the south and west, were "primarily rural," and they had a total of 13 million residents.

During the 1970s, the rural population increased faster than the metro population due to high farm prices and a back-to-the-farm movement, the quest for cheaper housing near metro areas, and competition due to baby boomers and women joining the labor force in urban areas. The farm crisis and economic recession of the 1980s made the 1970s rural renaissance short-lived; nonmetro areas continued to add people, but at a much slower pace than metro areas.

In the 21st century, nonmetro counties face uneven prospects. Between 2000 and 2005, over half of rural counties lost population. However, 200 rural counties grew rapidly by drawing new residents for their natural amenities. Other rural counties continue to lose population, especially in the southeast as textile factories close. Some rural areas are attracting workers and residents, such as meatpacking towns and those with prisons and casinos.

Jobs. The 23 million workers in rural America are 15 percent of the US labor force. Labor force participation is lower in rural areas and the unemployment rate higher. The true unemployment picture is significantly worse in rural areas, since many rural residents do not look for jobs if they "know" there are none.

Rural areas have relatively more manufacturing jobs than urban areas, so a shrinking manufacturing sector disproportionately hurts rural America. Employment growth in nonmetro counties in recent years has been fastest in the mountain states, where job growth is often associated with rural amenities, and slowest in Midwestern and southern farming-based counties.

Workers in nonmetro counties earn significantly less than workers in metro counties, largely because there are far more blue-collar jobs in rural areas and fewer managerial jobs. In 2003, rural workers earned a median $475 a week, compared to $565 for urban workers; for full-time workers, the gap was even larger, $530 a week compared to $645 in 2003.

There is a rural-urban gap in median weekly earnings that expands with level of education. Those without high-school diplomas earned a median $305 a week in 2003 in both rural and urban areas, while college graduates in rural areas earned a median $735 a week, significantly less than the $900 a week of college graduates in metro areas.

By race and ethnicity, women, Blacks and Hispanics had similar median weekly earnings in rural America in 2003, about $375 a week. In metro areas, by contrast, women and Blacks had median weekly earnings of about $485 a week and urban Hispanics $400 a week.

About a quarter of rural workers in 2003 earned less than $18,810, the poverty-level income for a family of four that year (working 2,000 hours at the then $5.15 minimum wage generated earnings of $10,300). Over half of those employed in leisure and hospitality in 2003 earned less than $18,800, almost half of those employed in agriculture, and a third of those employed in trade (in urban areas, low-earners were 40 percent, half, and a quarter of workers in these industries). Half of those with less than high-school educations, in both rural and metro areas, earned less than $18,800 in 2003.

Food Stamps. A record 28 million Americans are expected to receive Food Stamp benefits in 2008. The stamps, which are usually delivered as an electronic debit card, provide an average $100 per person per month that can be spent on food; the federal government's cost is expected to be $34 billion in FY08.

Families of four with incomes below 130 percent of the poverty line, about $27,560 in 2008, and few assets qualify for Food Stamps. The program is an entitlement, meaning that all those who are eligible and request benefits receive them.

The women, infants and children (WIC) program, by contrast, has a budget fixed by Congress. It provides food and nutrition counseling to 8.5 million pregnant women and children through the age of four with incomes below 185 percent of the federal poverty line, and is expected to run out of its $6 billion appropriation before the end of FY08.