Nebraska’s Rural Population: Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

Authors

Sam Cordes, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Randolph L. Cantrell, Nebraska Rural Initiative, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

December 2001

Comments

Published in Cornhusker Economics. December 5, 2001. Produced by the Cooperative Extension, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln .

Abstract

Those interested and concerned about rural Nebraska often focus on population data. In recent months, the media have been very active in focusing on this issue, largely because of the release of the 2000 U. S. Census numbers. For the most part, media reports and analysis have painted a fairly bleak picture of what happened in rural Nebraska during the decade of the 1990s. In this short article we summarize how the recent Census data can be used to paint such a bleak picture and refer to this as “the glass is half empty” story. We then provide an alternative perspective that has received little attention, referring to it as “the glass is half full” story.