Atlas of Rural and Small Town America

Resource Description

The Atlas of Rural and Small Town America is published by the USDA Economic Research Service. The Atlas maps county-level economic and social conditions using the following categories and data sources:

• People: Demographic data from the American Community Survey including age, race and ethnicity, migration and immigration, education, household size, and family characteristics
• Jobs: Economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including employment trends, unemployment, industrial composition, and household income
• Agriculture: Census of Agriculture data including number and size of farms, off-farm income, and government payments
• County Characteristics: Including rural or urban status, poverty persistence, and population loss

The mapping interface of the Atlas provides a user-friendly display of the data that allows users to view county-level maps for each of the 60 plus data sets, view an entire county or zoom to a region, state or other area, view a specific indicator for counties only of a certain type (e.g. rural or urban), obtain a full set of data for any given county, and print or save any map created for presentations or other use. Users can also download the data sets into a spreadsheet format for further analysis.