Rural Definitions

Note: Updates to this data product are discontinued. Dozens of definitions are currently used by Federal and State agencies, researchers, and policymakers. The ERS Rural Definitions data product allows users to make comparisons among nine representative rural definitions.

Methods of designating the urban periphery range from the use of municipal boundaries to definitions based on counties. Definitions based on municipal boundaries may classify as rural much of what would typically be considered suburban. Definitions that delineate the urban periphery based on counties may include extensive segments of a county that many would consider rural.

We have selected a representative set of nine alternative rural definitions and compare social and economic indicators from the 2000 decennial census across the nine definitions. We chose socioeconomic indicators (population, education, poverty, etc.) that are commonly used to highlight differences between urban and rural areas.

Data e Risorse

Campo Valore
accessLevel public
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describedBy http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/rural-definitions/data-documentation-and-methods.aspx
identifier USDA-ERS-00085
issued 2019-03-26
landingPage http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/rural-definitions.aspx
license https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
modified 2019-03-26
programCode {005:041}
publisher Economic Research Service, Department of Agriculture
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Gruppi
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  • National Provider
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Tag
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • ckan
  • geo
  • geoss
  • national
  • north-america
  • rural
  • rural-sociology
  • united-states
  • urban
isopen True
license_id cc-zero
license_title Creative Commons CCZero
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maintainer Website Administrator
maintainer_email webadmin@ers.usda.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-22T00:10:10.458427
metadata_modified 2025-11-22T00:10:10.458430
notes Note: Updates to this data product are discontinued. Dozens of definitions are currently used by Federal and State agencies, researchers, and policymakers. The ERS Rural Definitions data product allows users to make comparisons among nine representative rural definitions. Methods of designating the urban periphery range from the use of municipal boundaries to definitions based on counties. Definitions based on municipal boundaries may classify as rural much of what would typically be considered suburban. Definitions that delineate the urban periphery based on counties may include extensive segments of a county that many would consider rural. We have selected a representative set of nine alternative rural definitions and compare social and economic indicators from the 2000 decennial census across the nine definitions. We chose socioeconomic indicators (population, education, poverty, etc.) that are commonly used to highlight differences between urban and rural areas.
num_resources 2
num_tags 11
title Rural Definitions