Eminent demographers Dan Lichter and Kenneth Johnson have written a chapter for a publication of the St. Louis Fed. Their chapter is titled "A Demographic Lifeline to Rural America: Latino Population Growth in New Destinations, 1990-2019." Here's an excerpt:
America’s rural and small towns have experienced substantial racial and ethnic change since 1990. This reflects rapid in-migration of racial and ethnic minority populations, including Latinos and other immigrant and refugee populations. Perhaps paradoxically, growing racial and ethnic diversity is also due to white population declines from net out-migration and natural decrease. In 2019, 78% of the nonmetro population was identified as non-Hispanic white (see Figure 1). Between 1990 and 2019, the nonmetro Hispanic population nearly doubled in size. Hispanics are now the largest minority population, representing 9% of the rural population compared with 8% of the African American population. Asian, Native and multiracial peoples represent the remaining 5% of the nonmetro population.
The outsized demographic footprint of Latinos is also revealed in their share of all nonmetro growth since 1990 (Figure 1). Latinos accounted for 58% of overall nonmetro growth between 1990 and 2019, compared to only 7% among the non-Hispanic white population. African Americans contributed only 3% of overall rural growth since 1990. Other minority populations (including Asians, Native peoples and multiracial populations) accounted for almost one-third of all nonmetro growth since 1990.
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Over the entire 1990-2019 period (top panel, Table 2), more than 10% of all nonmetro counties grew in population size, but only because Hispanic growth offset non-Hispanic population declines. This represents 200 counties, distributed widely but unevenly across the United States (the light blue counties in Figure 3). In the Midwest, overall county population losses since 1990 occurred mostly in tandem with Hispanic population growth (shown in pink ). This pattern also characterizes Appalachia and historical Black Belt counties, spread in an arc from the Ozarks (in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas), to the Piedmont region (straddling the North Carolina and Virginia border), as well as various parts of the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions. The Hispanic population has been an engine of nonmetro growth over the 1990-2019 period, even as Hispanic population growth slowed considerably after 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession (bottom panel, Table 2).
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Revitalizing rural and small-town America requires new approaches that incentivize job growth, attract new migrants and retain young adults. Economic development efforts arguably must target those rural regions and communities that are sustainable in the longer term. Investments are most likely to reap success in rural communities with the most potential for growth—those of sufficient population size, with an infrastructure suited to an information-based economy and having a viable civic culture (e.g., with good schools, hospitals and cultural amenities), and located in close proximity to urban employment centers or natural amenities. Federal, state and local restrictions on legal immigration or on the number of refugees or asylum-seekers will not save rural America, rather those restrictions will limit potential sources of rural population and economic growth. That is why some civic and nonprofit organizations are now calling for heartland visas that could provide immigrants with opportunities to live and work in rural areas. Of course, this strategy has its own challenges. At a minimum, it requires greater tolerance and acceptance of racial and cultural diversity in rural communities with limited previous exposure to diverse populations. Hispanic growth is integral to the future well-being of rural America—to ongoing economic development efforts that promote thriving rural people and sustainable communities.
My 2009 article on Latina/os in new immigrant destinations in the South is here.
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