U.S. Census Report Confirms Declining Population of Rural Great Plains

Friday, 24 July 2009 05:58

 

By Deborah and Frank Popper

or a generation we have studied population trends in the rural Great Plains as part of our Buffalo Commons work on the region's land-use future. We recommend that everyone interested in the future of rural America read the U.S. Census Bureau report, Population Dynamics of the Great Plains: 1950-2007, written by Steven G. Wilson and released last week http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p25-1137.pdf.   From Rapid City or a desk in Washington, D.C., one might think the Plains population is increasing.  After all, the overall region's growth has matched that of the country, and the Black Hills area has outpaced it.  But the report shows in convincing detail that the population trend line of the most rural counties on the Great Plains has been down. Their demographic profile is one of decline, aging, and little in-migration. A majority of deep-rural counties had their high year of population before 1950, some before 1900 (p. 9 and Figure 6 of the report). The report notes that the great historian Frederick Jackson Turner was mistaken in his 1893 declaration, based on an 1890 Census report, that the American frontier had closed.  Frontier-level population density on the Great Plains continues to predominate (p. 14) and offers practical and policy challenges across the 20th century, and now the 21st.  We thank Mike Corn of the Hays Kansas Daily News for alerting us to the report.

 

Deborah E. Popper, College of Staten Island/City University of New York and Princeton University

Frank J. Popper, Rutgers and Princeton Universities

Photo by Morandi Hurst

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