State of Rural

In a briefing before the Minnesota House Agriculture Committee, Center for Rural Policy and Development Vice President of Research and Operations Marnie Werner outlined data from the recent State of Rural report. The report said the number of rural counties that reported population growth over the past four years is significantly higher than in the previous decade. However, the trend is for young adults from 25-to-29 years of age to move away from their rural communities. Werner also discussed suicide rates. “You can see that the line that is rising fastest and is the highest right now is for the entirely rural group of counties in Minnesota while the entirely urban Twin Cities counties have the shallowest trend line. Suicide rates don’t correlate but they follow the population density.”