Socioeconomic and Environmental Indicators for Rural Communities: Bridging the Scholarly and Practice Gap

Abstract

Because of large acreages, sparse populations, and distinct sociopolitical dynamics, many rural communities are beginning to assemble their own sets of economic indicators to fit unique policy agendas. This review summarizes over 30 years of practical efforts from six regions that created economic development reports. Reports cover 60% of the nonmetro counties in the United States. Over half the reports were issued in the last 5 years. To understand distinctions between scholarly efforts and how communities leverage publicly available data sets toward policy objectives, the authors compare the rural, regional economic development reports assembled through community partnerships with indicators recommended in rural wealth creation literature. The authors identify a gap in scholarship and practice with implications for how practitioners and researchers conceptualize the creation of wealth in rural areas and conclude with best-practice approaches to co-creating rural economic indicator reports, especially where data can be tailored precisely to rural areas.