Category: Our Research Reports

A discussion on the complex relationship between rural communities and our state’s most valuable resource by Marnie Werner, research director Andrew Hayes, research intern Can people who live in the land of 10,000 lakes really have a water problem? The city administrator of Worthington says yes, they can. Worthington, a community of 12,500, sits on ...

Transportation officials project that over the next two decades, the funds needed just to maintain Minnesota’s roads will fall at least $12 billion short. This policy brief discusses how that shortfall will show up on increasingly deteriorating rural roads.

Each year, the Center assembles the latest demographic and economic data to create the State of Rural Minnesota report. Most of the data used for the presentation can also be found at our Atlas of Minnesota Online. Click here to see the presentation.

Who owns rural Minnesota? On the surface, this seems like a fairly straightforward question, but scratch the surface, and it turns out to be a lot more complicated. Yes, farmers and people in towns and some companies and state and local government do own most of the land in rural Minnesota, just as they do ...

Rural Minnesota is losing it’s voice. That’s the conclusion of a study where researchers talked to 50 prominent Minnesota decision makers and surveyed 120+ more. Due to a combination of reasons, the state’s rural population is becoming increasingly left out and left behind on the discussions that affect our everyday lives. Finding the Voice of Rural ...

This latest study from the Center takes a look at what business owners think of the state's regulatory environment. Is there too much regulation? Too little? This full report is based on a study by faculty at Minnesota State University Mankato. It finds that business owners vary in their views of regulations based on business ...

Who Lives in Rural Minnesota: A Region in Transition   Who lives in rural Minnesota? When the editorial committee settled on this for a theme 2012, the answer seemed obvious. But as soon as the discussion began to scratch the surface, the reality became more and more complicated. The truth of the matter, the committee ...

ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION OF TELECOMMUNICATION COMPANIES SERVING GREATER MN Residents of Greater Minnesota receive telecommunications services from a variety of providers; and this industry is undergoing rapid change and evolution. Increasing challenges and pressures facing the telecommunications industry has led the Minnesota Telecommunications Alliance (MTA) to pose the question of “What is  the economic contribution of ...

Examining the current state of Internet access in Minnesota and how the digital divide is redefined now that Internet access is here to stay. The 2012 Minnesota Internet Survey is the ninth in a series of surveys looking at the state of Internet access in Minnesota since 2001. This latest survey looks at where we’re ...