Abstract
This chapter examines nonmetropolitan demographic trends in the first decade of the 21st century, with a particular focus on natural increase. Demographic growth and change in rural America is influenced both by natural increase and net migration. The two represent distinctly different but intimately interrelated demographic processes. The relative influence of each in overall rural demographic change has varied from one decade to another. Our results clearly show that natural increase has re-emerged as a prominent demographic force in the growth of rural America in the first decade of the 21st century. Nearly 77% of the rural population growth since 2000 is due to natural increase. Perhaps paradoxically, natural increase has become more important demographically even as the volume of rural natural increase has declined. In numerous nonmetro counties, deaths now routinely exceed births. That natural decrease is rising sharply now at the same time that annual births nationwide are at levels not seen since the baby boom underscores the complex set of factors that influence the demographic structure of rural America. The growing presence of Hispanics introduces a new element to the demographic calculus of nonmetropolitan America. The rapid growth of the Hispanic population – fueled increasingly by natural increase rather than in-migration – also underscores the changing racial and ethnic mix of America’s young people. Our research contributes to the understanding of rural demographic processes by emphasizing the critical role that natural increase/decrease is playing in rural population redistribution. It contributes to policy discussions by delineating the rapidity and geographic scale at which rural America is changing.
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Notes
- 1.
The “Third Demographic Transition” contrasts with the (first) demographic transition which is characterized by societal transitions from high fertility and mortality to low fertility and mortality rates, and the “Second Demographic Transition,” which usually refers to the growing disconnection between marriage and childbearing (i.e., rising nonmarital fertility) and to rapidly changing family structure that results from delayed marriage, rising cohabitation, and high rates of divorce (e.g., Lesthaeghe, 1995).
- 2.
In a small number of counties, NCHS suppressed the number of Hispanic births for confidentiality purposes. We used estimation procedures to allocate these suppressed births to specific counties. NCHS suppressed Hispanic births in a specific county in a specific year, if the number of Hispanic births was small. All counties in a given state with suppressed births were flagged as having suppressed data and the total number of Hispanic births in the state that were suppressed was reported. We used historical data (Hispanic births in a given county during another year) or estimated what proportion of all children that were Hispanic and resided in suppressed counties resided in this specific county to allocate suppressed Hispanic births in a given year to a specific suppressed county. Although this introduces an unknown but small degree of error in our estimates, we are confident that at the level of aggregation at which we present our results, it has no material impact on our overall conclusions.
- 3.
The geographic scale of analysis is particularly relevant to the study of natural decrease in the United States. Although natural decrease has probably occurred in small geographic areas (towns, villages) intermittently for some time, it was extremely rare at the county level until the 1960s (Beale, 1969). The first statewide incidence of natural decrease occurred in West Virginia in the late 1990s.
- 4.
Though it would be extremely valuable to have post-2000 age-specific migration data, it is calculated as a residual. The residual method, which calculates age-specific net migration as the difference between an expected and actual population in a county, requires extremely detailed and accurate counts of the population by age, race, and sex. Only the decennial Census enumerations provide the accurate beginning and end of period data required for calculating age-specific net migration.
- 5.
Of course, these secondary effects of natural increase will presumably dissipate with cultural and economic incorporation of Hispanics and aging-in-place. Fertility rates among native-born Hispanics are substantially lower than rates among foreign-born Hispanics, although age at first birth is much earlier among native-born than foreign-born Hispanics. Like other immigrant populations, fertility rates among Hispanics also tend to decline over successive generations; first-generation Hispanics have much higher fertility rates or parities than second- or third-generation Hispanics (Carter, 2000).
- 6.
Hispanic population increases were not restricted to locations proximate to metropolitan areas. The overall nonmetro Hispanic population gain from 1990–2000 was 65.7%. The gain was larger in nonmetro counties adjacent to a metropolitan area (73.4%) than in nonadjacent counties (54.2%). In all, nonmetro counties gained just over a million Hispanic residents during the 1990s. The metro percentage gain was slightly smaller than that in nonmetro areas (60.2%), though it was considerably larger in absolute terms at 12, 272,000. Between 2000 and 2005, the nonmetro Hispanic population grew by 18.9% adding another 497,000 residents with the gains in adjacent areas again exceeding those in nonadjacent counties. The metro population also continued to gain Hispanics, with a 21.1% gain of 6,885,000.
- 7.
But recent research suggests that some of the net Hispanic migration gain in rural areas also resulted from movement out of traditional Hispanic settlement areas in the Southwest and elsewhere (Lichter & Johnson, 2006; Donato, Tolbert, Nucci, & Kawano, 2007). The foreign-born population represents only 30% of the nonmetro Hispanic population, although a growing share of Hispanic in-migrants to rural areas appears to be arriving directly from Latin America countries (Kandel & Cromartie, 2004).
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Johnson, K.M., Lichter, D.T. (2012). Rural Natural Increase in the New Century: America’s Third Demographic Transition. In: Kulcsár, L., Curtis, K. (eds) International Handbook of Rural Demography. International Handbooks of Population, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1842-5_3
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