The Changing Educational Composition of Rural Counties

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Abstract

There has been lots of attention given to declining rural populations and the associated “brain drain” as the best and brightest young people move from rural to metropolitan areas. This paper addresses two less examined issues: how the overall educational composition of these declining rural populations is changing and what effect in-migration into these counties, both domestic and international, is having on that overall educational composition. The analysis reported here is limited to Texas counties. Of the state’s 254 counties, 126 are rural (neither classified as metropolitan nor micropolitan by the Census Bureau) and 56 of those rural counties experienced population decline from 2010 to 2015. In just those five years, these declining rural counties experienced an average population decline of 3.4%. During that same time interval, however, these declining rural counties recorded increases in both average educational level and variability in educational level.

Author

• Robert F. Szafran, Stephen F. Austin State University