ABSTRACT
International discussions of rural policy options often fail to appreciate the diversity of the rural situation both within and across OECD member countries. Specifically, some basic rural versus urban structural features illustrate the constraints experienced by some countries and the advantages experienced by other countries in promoting an active rural policy agenda. For example, countries with a smaller share of their population residing in predominantly rural regions would have a greater degree of freedom to consider targeted rural policy. Similarly, countries with a larger share of their rural workforce employed in agriculture will confront different challenges compared to countries with a smaller share of their rural workforce employed in agriculture. This chapter portrays the diversity of demographic and economic structures of predominantly rural regions across OECD member countries in order to improve the international comparative rural policy discourse. This profile will also help researchers in choosing “similar” rural regions for comparative policy analysis.
