Taxes and the role of government are issues that put rural
Americans at the center of the national conversation.
The state legislature is talking about increasing funding
for rural schools and increasing internet access.
It was also the rural vote that is credited
with propelling Donald Trump into the White House.
In our ongoing partnership with WisContext this week we look
at the influence of rural communities.
Specifically how do you define rural here in Wisconsin.
This week Malia Jones, an assistant scientist
in the Applied Population Laboratory
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins us.
Thanks for being here.
- Thanks for having me.
- Why did you set out to define rural?
- Well, as you said it's been the topic of national
conversation.
What's happening in rural America and rural issues.
And coming largely from an urban background I started to get
curious about what we really meant by rural places.
So I started looking at different ways to put rural
Wisconsin on a map.
And we came up with quite a few, actually, ways to define it.
- Well, what would you give us as the definition of rural?
- So there are a number of different definitions
that are out there.
I think the one that many urban places think of is closely
aligned with the census definition of urbanized places.
It's basically any place that has a developed land area is
considered urban and then everything else is rural.
But that includes a lot of the suburbs and even smaller cities
that are really not truly rural places
like others might think of them.
- Let's take a look at one of your maps.
It is kind of showing this non-urban and urban.
And describe for me what this map shows.
- This is the map that comes from the Federal Office
of Management and Budget definition
of metropolitan and micropolitan areas.
And this definition uses counties
so they are whole counties.
And they are either classified as metropolitan or micropolitan.
Those are two city-size designations.
And the -- every county that doesn't have a metro or
microcenter is considered rural.
- I can't count them up right here but how many counties
are designated as rural in Wisconsin
and maybe what percentage of the state?
- So in Wisconsin it's 32 counties are considered rural by
this definition.
And it is something like half of all the counties
and around half of the landmass.
But considerably fewer people, of course,
because rural places are much less densely settled.
- That's a lot of rural space.
- It is.
- What are the significant demographics of rural people?
- So in Wisconsin, we see really strong patterns around
age.
And rural places tend to be older and also considerably
less race and ethnically diverse than our urban places.
And then in addition, of course, there are big differences in
terms of economy as anyone who has ever been to a rural place
would know.
There are specific land uses like agriculture and forestry,
mining and manufacturing that are really centered
in our rural places.
- You take a look at something else and we have a map of that.
It is the rural versus remote or frontier,
which is really interesting to me.
What is remote and frontier?
- So this is another definition that was developed by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
And it is meant to identify places where residents would
have a hard time accessing basic services and specialty services
like auto repair, groceries, emergency health services,
specialty health services.
And so the definition is based on how far residents have to
drive to get to some kind of town center or urban center
where they could access those needed services.
It is really about people who have poor transportation
or low resources and are living in these remote areas
and the kinds of resources they can get to.
- You have a really delightful map as well that has to do with
the cow to person ratio.
Is this a scientific measure or just one for Wisconsin?
- When we were making all these maps we heard a number of people
tell us that their county was rural based on the fact
there were more cows than people.
I actually went and got the data for
the number of cows per county.
And we came up with this map of the parts of Wisconsin
where there are more cows than people
which it turns out is a considerable part of the state
as we might have guessed.
- How does Wisconsin compare to other states when it comes
to percentage of parts of the state that are rural?
- Wisconsin has a relatively large proportion of our
population that is living in rural places.
And also relatively large amount of land area.
We're also, I think, uniquely dependent -- not uniquely
but more dependent on rural economy than some other places.
We don't have the kind of major urban center
that dominates the state the way some other nearby states do
like Illinois and Minnesota.
So it's -- we do have a big rural population
and it is an important part of our state.
- Thanks for defining it in so many different ways.
Malia Jones, thanks.
- Thank you.