Tag: rural

By Marnie Werner, Vice President, Research & Operations Greater Minnesota can be hard to define for people who don’t live there. Kind of amorphous. And it is hard to come up with a good single name that encompasses what is basically the whole state outside of the seven-county Twin Cities metro. But for us at ...

In this episode, Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher at the Center, interviews Erik Osberg, Rural Rebound Coordinator for Otter Tail County. They discuss how Otter Tail County created the Rural Rebound initiative, the research framework backing their initiative, and some tips for other rural regions wanting to develop a similar initiative.

    March 2025 By Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher & Marnie Werner, Vice President of Research & Operations Click here for a printable version of the report. It seems that Minnesota’s regions continue to pit themselves against each other when discussing population growth—specifically, population migration and workforce development—but discussions usually lead to confusing and contradictory ...

By Marnie Werner, VP, Research & Operations We’ve been spending some time with mental health and mental health care the last few years here at the Center, and one thing we’ve found, which should be surprising to no one who follows our work or just lives in this state, is that we have a shortage ...

By Sarah Harstad, Ph.D., Researcher Why should business owners start planning so early? The Center for Rural Policy and Development’s recent report on business ownership succession showed that 81% of business owners are not prepared for succession or exit when the opportunity comes up or when they decide to go through with it. On the ...

  December 2024 By Sarah Harstad, Ph.D. Click here for a pdf version of this report. Click here for the full version of this report. The future is here Minnesota is facing a threat to the economic and social life of rural areas. According to data from the U.S. Census, 53% of Minnesota business owners ...

November 2024 By: Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher After the release of our report exploring the declines in nursing facility beds, we received a question wondering if there was any relationship between facilities that closed and the type of license (nonprofit vs. for-profit) they were under. So let’s explore that question. Between 2005 and 2024, there ...

By: Kelly Asche A new report by the Center for Rural Policy will be published in early November focused on trends in nursing home facility beds. As many of you may have heard or experienced, nursing homes across Minnesota have been either closing or reducing the number of beds they have available, lately due to ...

By: Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher Every January, the Center for Rural Policy and Development releases the “State of Rural,” a report that reviews the important demographic and economic  trends in Greater Minnesota. We usually have to wait until December—that is when the U.S. Census Bureau releases the newest batch of data for the American Community ...