Is There Hope for the Rural Great Plains?

Tuesday, 24 March 2009 13:58

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Eric John Abrahamson--For decades the demographic story of the northern Great Plains has been the same. People are leaving the rural areas and sparsity is increasing. While a handful of urban areas have grown, the population of the region as a whole has remained generally stagnant. Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual update of population estimates for the nation, including region-by-region and county-by-county comparisons of absolute and relative growth. For folks working in rural and economic development in the eastern portions of Wyoming and Montana, the Dakotas, and Nebraska, the question is: is there any sign of a change in the decades-old pattern of exodus?

For big city dwellers the answer is yes. Most of the major metropolitan areas in the region grew at a healthy rate between July 2007 and July 2008. Seven of ten major cities (Billings, Bismarck, Casper, Cheyenne, Fargo, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls) expanded by an average of 1.9 percent. These growth rates don't compare to the boom in some parts of the West and the South, but they are significant to a region that has been losing population for such a long time.

Not all metro areas in the region were winners. Grand Forks, Great Falls, and Sioux City grew by just under 0.5 percent over the year. These cities have been struggling to hold population throughout this decade. Since 2000, Grand Forks has lost nearly 200 residents. Meanwhile, the metropolitan population of Sioux City has remained essentially flat.

For those cities in the region that are growing, the question is: did urban growth rates come at the continuing expense of rural counties and micropolitan communities in the region? Out of 20 "micropolitan" communities with populations ranging from 15,878 to 70,694, growth rates between 2007 and 2008 were all below the average for the metropolitan areas. Collectively, they each grew by an average of just over half a percent. Communities that lost 1 percent or more of their population included Pierre, SD and Wahpeton, ND-MN. Micropolitan communities that gained more than 1 percent included Brookings, SD; Grand Island, NE; Huron, SD; Laramie, WY; Riverton, WY; and Sheridan, WY.

Thus, with some variation, the micropolitan communities are holding their own, but they are not growing as fast as the metropolitan areas. State-to-state variations are significant as well. With its energy-rich resources, eastern Wyoming's metropolitan and micropolitan areas all have net positive growth in this decade. In North Dakota, however, while the metropolitan areas have shown healthy growth, the micropolitan areas have, for the most part, lost population since 2000. Meanwhile, in South Dakota and Nebraska micropolitan areas have experienced more uneven growth with some communities growing by several percentage points in this decade and others losing population.

But what about the rural counties? In all of the counties in eastern Montana, Wyoming and the states of North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, population outside the metropolitan areas has continued to decline. The economic opportunities offered by the internet and telecommuting have not begun to influence the larger demographic wave of history that has carried people out of the rural areas and into the major towns and cities of the region. The slow growth of some micropolitan regions and even the slowing of the exodus from some rural communities may reflect the presence of new pioneers working remotely from the northern Great Plains, but until we get richer information from the 2010 Census, we can't know for sure.