Where the Rural Is

This morning I saw a list of the most and least rural states in the U.S. It highlighted both the states with the most rural people overall and the highest percentage of rural people.

The numbers are based on the 2020 Census. An urban area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, at that time, had a population of at least 2,500 in a contiguous area. 

So that means rural, as an opposite term, would be municipalities whose population is below 2,500.

Overall, a bit over 66 million people lived in rural areas at the time. Not surprisingly, the state with the most rural residents is Texas (4.7 million, 16.3% of the state's population). The one with the highest percentage is Vermont (almost 65% of its population). 

The 10 states with the lowest percentage of rural residents were:

1. California 5.8%
2. Nevada 5.9%
3. New Jersey 6.2%
4. Florida 8.5% 
5. Massachusetts 8.7%
6. Rhode Island 8.9%
7. Utah 10.2%
8. Arizona 10.7%
9. New York 12.6%
10. Illinois 13.1%

Despite being on the top-10 low-percentage list, two states still came out on the top-10 list of rural residents by population: New York is number 7, with about 2.5 million, and California is number 9, with about 2.3 million.
 
The other top 10 states by population, after Texas at number 1, are:

2 North Carolina
3 Pennsylvania 
4 Ohio
5 Georgia
6 Michigan
8 Tennessee
10 Alabama

For the next Census, the definition of urban will be: 

a densely settled core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density and/or population density requirements. This includes adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses. To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000.

Changing the definition of urban from 2,500 to 5,000 people will make historical comparisons difficult, to say the least. 

As a person who's originally from an area that I definitely consider rural, I wonder a bit about the definitional change from 2,500 to 5,000. I'm not a demographer but places with 4,500 people seem significantly different from ones under 2,500. (Even 2,500 is a lot of people compared to where I'm from!) 

Here's an AP story from the time when the change was announced. As the story says, the change has implications for how money is awarded that affects peoples' lives, including significant ways related to hospitals.