Rural Development through Strengthened Rural–Urban Linkages

Among researchers, there is broad consensus that rural development policies in the United States (US) have not met the needs of rural people and communities (Stauber, 2001: 33) and that “policies to improve the disappointing economic performance of rural regions are, by and large, not working” (Porter et al., 2004: 3). Quigley (2002), for example, provides a detailed analysis of economic trends in rural and urban areas from 1970–2000 and finds a drop in total rural personal income, rural per capita incomes at about 70 percent of urban incomes, and increasing disparities in wages and salaries between rural and metropolitan regions. Further, the period between 2010 and 2012 represents the first recorded period of nonmetro population loss in US history, highlighting a growing demographic challenge facing much of rural America. At the community level, this may reduce the demand for jobs, diminish the quality of the workforce, and raise the per capita cost of providing services (Kusmin, 2013: 6). ¹