ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the history of change in the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of rural areas in the United States through 1980 and examines its service base in 1980. It suggests that the economic base of agriculture has not been able to support its human resource base. The chapter examines the socioeconomic characteristics of the rural farm and nonfarm populations in comparison to the urban population component. The size of the population, its distribution, and its characteristics, particularly its economic and social characteristics, have placed clear limitations on the magnitude and types of responses to the crisis that have been possible within rural areas. Even during the 1970s when the patterns of renewed rural population growth that came to be known as the nonmetropolitan population turnaround were pervasive, counties with economic bases dependent on agriculture continued to lose population. The rural farm population has become an increasingly homogeneous population in terms of its racial and ethnic composition.
