Rural America is a diverse landscape ranging from rapidly growing amenity rich communities to struggling resource-based towns and villages. A key feature is that rural population growth quickly tails off for rural communities more distant from urban centers. A long period of higher energy prices...

We often use the term rural very loosely when discussing public policy. Rarely do we describe explicitly the kinds of places we have in mind for particular programs and craft precise eligibility requirements that deliver the programs to those places without expensive leakages to other,...

Poverty is not evenly distributed across the American landscape. At the county level of aggregation, poverty is overwhelmingly a rural problem, with the most remote rural places at the greatest disadvantage. 1 Although research has shown that “place matters†in poverty outcomes and...

Large discount retail stores (or “big box†stores) generate both costs and benefits to local communities that are unevenly distributed across local employees, shoppers, other businesses and government. While these impacts affect communities across the urbanrural spectrum, the hardest...

Although all land use is local, few problems require the more urgent attention of state legislators than that of land use. How land is used has important economic, social and environmental consequences that may affect all residents of a state. States must take on more active roles as...

Tax and expenditure limitations (TEL) on state and local governments have been passed with the presumption they will limit the growth of government, raise government efficiency, and increase direct democracy by requiring voter approval of tax increases. Both the popular press and the academic...

Most discussions of rural health policy overlook the key role that states play in crafting and delivering programs that directly affect the access, cost, or quality of health services to rural residents. However, policies such as regulations embodied in medical practice acts, education programs,...

It is no secret that much of rural America is struggling economically. Despite similar employment growth rates, nonmetropolitan areas tend to have relatively higher unemployment and underemployment rates and slower population growth rates than their metropolitan counterparts.1 Additionally, over...