Today's Daily Yonder breaks open a shiny box of BEA statistics, and comes up with a neat map of income growth in rural areas between 2007 and 2008:
When you rank the nation’s 3,112 counties according to their growth in personal income between 2007 and 2008, the top of the chart has a countrified appearance.
The county with the highest percentage growth in total income was Faulk, a rural county in South Dakota, which reported a 54 percent growth. The next county on the list is rural (Clark County, Idaho) and so is the next (Cavalier County, North Dakota).
And on down the list. The 108 counties with the fastest growth in income between ’07 and ’08 are all rural. The first non-rural county is Benton County, Indiana, ranking 109.
The Yonder surmises that the driving force behind income growth in rural counties was rising farm incomes.
Another interesting factoid that the Yonder notes: Most of the rural counties that saw their personal income decline between 2007 and 2008 are in oil and gas country.
