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In the 1990s, studies have documented widespread growth of immigrants in U.S. communities not known as common destinations in the past. This trend has fueled population growth in some nonmetropolitan areas and offset population decline in other areas. In this paper, we examine the implications of recent foreign born in-migration for rural America. Our focus is on a collection of 59 nonmetropolitan counties where growth in foreign born stock offset declines in U.S. native population and resulted in increased local population by 2000. To understand these nonmetropolitan offset counties, we use confidential Census Bureau data that offer us the detailed geography and larger sample size needed to closely examine spatial shifts in the foreign born population, especially those recently arrived. Our findings illustrate dramatic compositional shifts in the populations of these areas, and suggest new demographic complexity in nonmetropolitan areas in the 21st century.

The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to gain a fuller understanding of factors that foster community cohesion and contribute to the residents' social and economic well-being; and, second, to move beyond previous research that used larger spatial units such as states, counties, or aggregates of counties and to focus instead on American small towns (population 2,500-20,000). The data on small towns are drawn from public-use files and from confidential microdata from various economic censuses. From these sources we construct measures of locally oriented firms, self-employment, business establishments that serve as gathering places, and associations. The local capitalism and civic engagement variables generally perform as hypothesized; in some cases they are related quite strongly to civic welfare outcomes such as income levels, poverty rates, and nonmigration rates. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working with place-level data and suggest some strategies for subsequent work on small towns and other incorporated places.

Migration between rural and urban areas in the United States seemed simpler and easier to explain in the 1950s and 1960s. After World War II millions of farm residents, particularly young people and African Americans from the rural South, streamed into cities to seek jobs and higher wages in manufacturing and related industries or to experience benefits of urban life. Initial accounts of the 1970s turnaround stressed long-term trends that made nonmetropolitan locations more attractive as places to live and do business. Better roads, better communications and more extensive and more reliable government services opened up many rural areas and allowed greater economic diversification. In 1980s, America became vulnerable to international competition and lost manufacturing jobs, however financial deregulation caused a boom in commercial construction. The prosperity of the 1990s eased some of the pressures on nonmetropolitan areas, and fewer nonmetropolitan residents moved to metropoliltan areas.