Tag: rural

December 2024 By Sarah Harstad, Ph.D. 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 are over age 55.[1] The state boasts over 525,000 businesses,[2] but due to this “silver tsunami” that has already ...

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 ...

By: Kelly Asche, Senior Research Every January, the Center for Rural Policy and Development releases the “State of Rural,” a report that provides the trends of important demographic and economic measures. 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 Survey, ...

By Marnie Werner, Vice President of Research & Operations In a report we released last February, we talked about an important tool in the work on suicide prevention, 988. The suicide prevention phone number changed in 2022 from its former ten-digit 800 number to the easy-to-remember three digits. As part of our discussion on suicide ...

The Center for Rural Policy & Development and the Citizens League hosted another conversation in their Interconnected series on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. This online conversation covered the housing crisis and challenges across Minnesota – from substantial racial disparities in homeownership to innovative housing solutions, how are communities and organizations across the state working to ...

The USDA – ERS has released the new Rural-Urban Continuum Codes for each county. Kelly Asche, Senior Research April 2024 People love classifications—the ability to split things into separate, distinct groups makes them easier to measure, providing some clarity when creating policy. Although we agree that most classifications aren’t perfect, we also don’t give enough ...

The recent Census of Agriculture shows that ag in rural Minnesota isn’t monolithic. Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher April 2024 A topic that is frequently discussed among rural residents, particularly in agricultural areas, is how much farming has changed over the last 50 years. The technology being used, the crops that now dominate the landscape, and ...