rural idiocy

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Wojtek wrote:
>At 09:34 AM 5/7/98 -0500, Yoshie wrote:
>>Michael Hoover wrote:
>>>Areas of Residence 1950-1990
>>>Source: U.S. Dept of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,  _Statistical
>>>Abstracts of the United States_
>>>
>>>1950:
>>>Central Cities (City): 33%
>>>Suburbs: 23%
>>>Outside Metropolitan Statistical Area (Rural): 44%
>>>
>>>1970:
>>>City: 31%
>>>Suburbs: 37%
>>>Rural: 31%
>>>
>>>1990:
>>>City: 31%
>>>Suburbs: 46%
>>>Rural: 23%
>>
>>Stats provided by Michael says that the most significant change is not
>>out-migration from cities to suburbs but depopulation of rural areas and/or
>>what used to be rural areas developping into suburbs.
>
>I thought about that too, but not necessarily.  The pricing of suburban and
>urban residences suggests a different pattern: rural migrants moving to the
>cities where housing costs are lower than in the suburbs.  Manhattan,
>Boston or San Francisco might be excpetions, but that ceratinly holds for
>other cities.

Wojtek's hypothesis doesn't seem to explain the changes in areas of
residence covered by the stats from the period 1950-1990, however, in that
the proportion of city residents shows a decline while that of suburbanites
records an increase, according to the figures provided.

I think that a large scale migration from rural areas to cities took place
earlier, from the end of the Civil War to the periods before that of the
above stats.

Yoshie