May 17, 2021
In Part II of this three-part series on Reimagining Rural
Policy, produced in collaboration with and underwritten by the
Brookings Institution, Michelle talks with
Gbenga Ajilore Senior Advisor in the Office of the
Under Secretary, USDA-RD; Kennedy O’Dell, a Senior Research and
Policy Associate at the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a
bipartisan think tank focused on forging a more dynamic U.S.
economy; and Erik Stegman (Carry the Kettle First Nation Nakoda),
Executive Director of Native Americans in Philanthropy, a
national organization advocating for stronger and more meaningful
investments by the philanthropic sector in tribal communities. The
guests take a deep dive into the importance of developing rural
policy that reflects the diversity of rural America and serving a
broader racial equity agenda. Rural myths, such as being
predominantly agricultural (today more than 70 percent of the rural
economy is service-based) are detrimental to developing successful
rural policy, according to Ajilore. It’s important, he notes, to
increase infrastructure, including broadband, to enable rural
sectors not just to survive but to thrive. Native Americans did not
“come to rural,” but rural came to them, Stegman points out, adding
that more than 70 percent of Native Americans live off the
reservation, as a result of intention federal incentive programs to
relocate them, and today the typical experience of native Americans
is going between rural and urban areas. It’s difficult to create a
system can accurately capture what’s “rural,” but there’s an
appetite to find a suitable definition of rural for both policy and
research. EIG created a hybrid definition of rural that found that,
in 2018, about 2300 counties were classified as rural, which
translates into a rural population of about 52.5 million. In
terms of indicators of distress, she says, the average poverty rate
in rural areas is nearly 3 percentage points higher than non-rural
areas, and rural areas lag in terms of population and employment
growth. The largest age cohort in rural areas is 55-64, compared to
25-34 in non-rural areas. In addition, O’Dell points out, terms of
well-being and distress indicators, more than 50 percent of black
residents and 45 percent of Native Americans lived in distressed
counties, compared to 18 percent of rural whites, according to EIG
statistics. This is evidence of systemic inequality, and Ajilore
says that post-pandemic, the American Jobs Plan and America
Families Plan will hopefully address these inequities, making sure
the recovery is inclusive, targeting specific resources, including
assistance to community colleges and HBUCs. Stegman notes
that the more than 570 federally recognized tribal nations see new
opportunity to strengthen their nation-to-nation relationship with
the federal government; while there have been historic
underinvestment in federal resource, more than $31 billion was
targeted toward tribal nations under the COVID recovery package.
O’Dell concludes the conversation by noting that
EIG has proposed a Cabinet-level department or National Development
Strategy to deal with the fragmented federal approach to rural
economic development. This episode and the entire three-part series
are sponsored by the Brookings Institution, www.brookings.edu.