There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.
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America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.
According to a recent Agriculture Department estimate, the rural population did rebound by 0.25 percent from 2020 to 2022 as some families decamped from urban areas during the pandemic.
But demographers say they are still evaluating whether that trend will continue, and if so, where. Pennsylvania has been particularly afflicted. Job losses in the manufacturing and energy industries that began in the 1980s prompted many younger families to relocate to Sun Belt states. The relocations helped fuel population surges in places like Texas and Georgia. But here, two-thirds of the state’s 67 counties have experienced a drop in population in recent years.
With WFH I just need a small town with high speed internet. However, with kids, rural schools do not rank well.
I don’t have kids at home anymore, but have online schools become a thing yet?
Seems to me like that’s a huge opportunity to tailor school to every kid’s ability, though the socialization would suffer. But plenty of kids come out of homeschooling just fine.
As long as the kids have other outlets for social interaction. We did online during covid and I wouldn’t do it again.
My daughter is in online school, a public school in fact, and a WFH job would be difficult for me to hold because I have to spend all day supervising her, which is exhausting enough, and the job would have to be one I could do in the evenings.
So you just don’t work at all?
They sure do post a lot on Lemmy for being a stay at home parent supervising their kid… 1670+ posts, 34500+ comments in 12 months. That’s about 4 posts and 95 comments per day.
No, both because of that and because of a serious illness. But even if I didn’t have the illness, I would be doing two jobs and not getting paid for one of them.