and Demographic Context -- Rural America through a Demographic Lens -- The Rural Rebound and its Aftermath -- Four Critical Socio-Demographic Themes -- The Changing Faces of Rural America -- Changing Livelihoods in Rural America -- Fifty Years of Farmland Change -- Changing Fortunes -- Case Studies of Population and Society in Different Rural Regions -- Rural Hispanic Population Growth -- Social Integration Among Older in-Migrants in Nonmetropolitan Retirement Destination Counties -- Agricultural Dependence and Changing Population in the Great Plains -- Gaming, Population Change, and Rural Development on Indian Reservations -- Metro Expansion and Nonmetro Change in the South -- Changing Land Use in the Rural Intermountain West -- Does Second Home Development Adversely Affect Rural Life? -- Housing Affordability and Population Chang in the Upper Midwestern North Woods -- Social Change and Well-Being in Western Amenity-Growth Communities -- Community Evaluation and Migration Intentions -- Poverty and Income Inequality in Appalachia -- Welfare Reform Amidst Chronic Poverty in the Mississippi Delta -- New Analytic Directions and Policy Implications -- Explorations in Spatial Demography -- Policy Implications of Rural Demographic Change.

This book contains the latest research on social and economic trends occurring in rural America. Conducted by an interdisciplinary and regionally diverse group of social scientists, this original research highlights four major themes transforming contemporary rural areas: population composition change; industrial restructuring and changing livelihoods; changing patterns of rural land use; and areas of persistent disadvantage and emerging opportunity. Each theme is examined with an expanded overview and geographically varied case studies. This volume is the first scholarly assessment exclusively focused on rural demographic trends that exploits data from Census 2000. It contributes to knowledge of the interdependency between population change and rural society, and it provides an empirical context for considering policy choices. Enriched by perspectives from demographers, geographers, historians, and, sociologists, this volume is an essential starting point for scholarship on rural demographic change in the 21th Century.