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Commuting and the rural-urban hierarchy
0733-0167/91 $3.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Press plc
Jo~tmul of Hltrcrl Sllct1ie.s.Vol. 7. No. J. pp. 459-466. 1991 Printed in Great Britain
Commuting and the Rural-Urban Hierarchy’ Glenn V. Fuguitt Department
of Rural
Sociology,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706. U.S.A.
Madison,
WI
Abstract - The purpose of this paper is to consider the relation between commuting and the settlement structure, with particular attention to rural and nonmetropolitan areas. I examined commuting flows between metropolitan central cities, other metropolitan areas, nonmetropolitan places with more than 10,000 people, those with 2500-10.000 people, and other rural areas. Despite the deconcentration of population, industry and trade that was especially marked in the 1970s. commuting in 1980 was predominantly toward larger places in the ruralurban hierarchy, and particularly from rural areas and the other metropolitan category to cities. Overall levels of commuting were high, and most were within either nonmetropolitan or metropolitan areas. Smaller nonmetropolitan places particularly had high proportions of both in- and out-commuters. Differences in commuting flows by gender, socioeconomic status and industry were small, but generally in the directions expected on the basis of prior research. The findings reveal a high degree of work-residence interdependence among settlement units in nonmetropolitan America, with social and economic differences in commuting flows representing an important aspect of community structure.
Commuting
and the rural-urban
growth down the urban hierarchy, outwards within metropolitan areas from core to ring, outwards from metropolitan to nonmetropolitan areas, and outwards from the old industrial core of the northeast to the south and west (Hall and Hay, 1980; Heaton and Fuguitt, 1980). This was only partially reversed during the 1980s along the metropolitan-nonmetropolitan dimension (Fuguitt et al., 1989; Beale and Fuguitt, 1990).
hiearachy
With the deconcentration of population and economic activities over this century in the advanced nations, there has been a transformation in rural and urban communities and in their interrelations. In the United States of America and many other countries this process seemed to culminate in the 1970s when deconcentration extended well beyond the peripheries of principal cities into remote rural areas (Frey, 1988; Fuguitt, 1985). Whereas in the nineteenth century, the city was both a political and a functional area, today urban settlement and activities extend far beyond city boundaries, and the relations among
An important aspect of this transformation, having particular significance for small towns and rural areas, is commuting. The increasing separation of home and work has made for a more diffuse pattern of settlement just as it has helped to tie together elements of the urban hierarchy, including rural and urban areas. Yet we know comparatively little about the relation between commuting and the settlement structure, particularly as it pertains to rural and nonmetropolitan areas. This is the subject of the research reported here.
cities and between cities, towns and rural areas have become ever more complex. Trends for the United
States of America in the 1970s showed a spread of -_-.-.--_~ .--~_-. ’ Paper prepared for the 14th European Congress of Rural Sociology, Geissen, Federal Republic of Germany, 16-20 July 1990. This research was supported by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of WisconsinMadison and Agriculture and Rural Economy Division, Eoonomic Research Service. U.S. Department of Agriculture, through a co-operative agreement, and by the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, through a grant from the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The assistance of Michael Reibel is gratefully acknowledged.
Using a special file from the 1980 U.S. Census, I have examined the place-of-work/place-of-residence interrelations among a five-category size-of-place classification for the United States of America as a whole. The objective of this research is to answer the following questions: 459
460
Glenn
(1) What is the extent and direction of commuting among elements of the size-of-place hierarchy, and how does this help to structure the relationship between rural and urban, metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas? At least prior to recent years one would expect a major commuting stream going from the balance of the metropolitan area (often called the ring) to the central city, since there has been a significant residential deconcentration in metropolitan areas in this century. Elsewhere the earlier pattern should include relatively less commuting, but that primarily from lower to higher units in the hierarchy, as rural areas and small towns become more closely integrated with the economic activities in larger urban and metropolitan areas. More recent trends however, have included the further deconcentration of population along with manufacturing, business and retail trade, so that smaller cities and nonmetropolitan areas gained more than larger places and metropolitan areas in the 1970s. This dispersed growth pattern has led to questions about the extent to which residence and economic activities continue to be structured hierarchically, as constraints on location are lessened, and we perhaps even move into an ‘information society’ (Cleveland, 1985). Does commuting in 1980 continue to support and help maintain a rural-urban hierarchy? One would at least expect a relatively high level of commuting from residence to work across the five size of place groups. In metropolitan areas, there has been increased ‘back-commuting’ from the central city to the balance of the metropolitan area, and comparative studies have shown an increase in the degree of intercounty commuting in nonmetropolitan areas (Frey and Speare, 1988; Krout, 1983). Though overall the net direction might still be toward the higher level units, there should at least be significant counter-streams reflecting a greater homogeneity across all types of settlement. This is the prediction of Parr (1987), who starts with the traditional central place model and incorporates both specialized goods and commuting flows. He predicts net flows to be up the hierarchy, but with a complex pattern of inter-level commuting. Some previous work has appeared to assume that nonmetropolitan commuting patterns are primarily a movement of nonmetro residents to metro jobs, as metropolitan zones of influence extend outward with ‘Race differences were not considered here because there are very few nonmetropolitan Subsequent work by region dimension.
blacks outside the South. should include the racial
V. Fuguitt improvements in transportation to include most of nonmetropolitan America (Berry and Gillard, 1977). An initial reaction to the unexpected nonmetropolitan growth in the early 1970s was that it was primarily a reflection of metropolitan residential deconcentration, presumably accompanied by increased levels of commuting to metropolitan areas. It soon became apparent, however, that there was also renewed population growth in areas remote from large cities, and commuting studies in the 1970s revealed that most of the commuting in nonmetropolitan areas was within the nonmetropolitan sector (Taaffe et al., 1980; Bowles and Beale, 1980). In a preliminary analysis of these data, I found this also was true in 1980, with considerable commuting within the nonmetropolitan counties of the nation (Fuguitt et al., 1989). These results underscore the need to determine commuting patterns between nonmetropolitan cities and rural areas in seeking to understand the present situation.
(2) How do the patterns of commuting across the size of place groups differ by sex, socioeconomic status, and industry? The division of labor among cities, towns and rural areas is structured along a number of dimensions, including gender, socioeconomic status and industrial specialization.’ There are notable variations among size-of-place groups in residential composition and in the types of jobs available for workers, and one might also expect differences in the propensity to commute among population subgroups. A consideration of such differentials is therefore necessary for understanding the nature of commuting across the rural-urban hierarchy. Previous research on commuting has shown a difference in the extent and nature of commuting for men and women, and by socioeconomic status (e.g. Goldstein and Mayer, 1964; Wheeler, 1967; Pisarski, 1987). Though some findings have differed for nonmetropolitan areas (Clemente and Summers, 1975) a recent nationwide analysis showed nonmetropolitan differentials to be similar to that reported for metropolitan-based research (Bowles and Beale, 1980). Overall, women are less likely to commute longer distances than men, probably due in part to greater likelihood of having part-time work. On the other hand, jobs held by women traditionally are more likely to be found in cities, so one would expect women to be more likely to commute up the size-of-place hierarchy than men. Research also has shown higher status individuals to be more likely to commute. There has been a considerable deconcentration of higher status residences around cities, and although jobs having greater economic rewards have deconcentrated,
Commuting and the Rural-Urban they continue to be differentially located in cities. Thus one would expect those with such occupations to be more likely to commute up the urban hierarchy than those with tower status jobs. The same is true for certain services, particularly producer services (professional, business and repair services), which are identified with the major metropolitan centers of the nation. On the other hand, the deconcentration of manufacturing to small towns and rural areas was a major element in the resurgence of population and employment growth in the 1970s. Thus for manufacturing one might expect less commuting up to larger places than is true for all workers, as well as more employment by residents living within small towns and rural areas that does not involve commuting across levels of the hierarchy. Data As part of a census monograph project, I obtained a special i-in- 100 public use microdata file of the 1980 U.S. Census, in which the population was classified both by metropolitan-nonmetropolitan status and by community size. From this I was able to make a matrix of workers by place of residence and place of work using the following categories in a size-of-place hierarchy: (1) metropolitan central cities; (2) the metropolitan remainder, sometimes called the ring; (3) nonmetropolitan places with 10,000 or more inhabitants; (4) nonmetropolitan places with 25009YYYpeople; and (5) the nonmetropo~itan remainder including those in smaller villages and the open country. In the United States of America, counties are classed as metropolitan if they include cities, which with their surrounding thickiy settled territory include at least 50,000 peopIe.3 In addition, adjacent counties closely integrated to the metropolis through commuting and other indicators are included in metropolitan areas. Thus the nonmetropolitan --._---. ..-___ .. .._.-.. ‘If the central city or cities have less than 50.~~0 population, the area must have at least 100.000 population. (See U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1983.) “The reference population here is 88,088,OOO as estimated from the special I-in-100 Public Use Microdata file of the 1980 U.S. Census. This includes persons 16 and over at work during the census week in April 19X0(approximately 96.6 million according to published census reports) less those whose place of work was in an outlying area or foretgn country, abroad or at sea, or who did not report a place of work. In addition I dropped 136,OUO persons who lived in nonmetropolitan urbanized areas in the Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic, East South Central and Mountain census divisions. The Bureau of the Census classified nonm~tropolitan persons living in urbanized areas (thickly settled territory around large cities) in the 10.000 and over size category. Dropping these persons removed most of those who did not actually live in cities over 10,Ot.M).
Hierarchy
461
territory is generally beyond the immediate environs of large cities. The ‘other metropolitan’ category in this scheme (often called the ring) is three-quarters urban, but these cities and thickly settled areas are located close to, and are presumably satellites or functionally part of the larger urban places designated as central cities. The nonmetropolitan less than 2500 category is entirely rural by U.S. Census definition, but about 20% of the residents there live in incorporated villages with less than 2500 people, perhaps another 20% live in unincorporated villages (that is, not official government units) and the others in the open country. The commuting detected by this approach is that between but not within the size groups, and the number of levels in the hierarchy between home and work is not an indication of distance traveled. For example, a person living in a rural area next to a city and working in that city might travel only a short distance. Consequently, the proportions of these counted as commuters are higher than found in comprevious research identifying intercounty muters. On the other hand, one could commute a long distance within one of the categories, as from one nonmetropolitan city of 2500-9999 to another, and not be counted as a commuter here. Our concern here is about how different types of areas or places in the rural-urban hierarchy are interrelated through the process of commuting. Findings Commuting represents a substantial interrelation among units of the size-of-place hierarchy. Table 1 shows the distribution of the 88 million employed workers classified by pIace of residence and by place of work according to the five residence groups.4 The two bottom lines are the total distributions of the population by place of work and by place of residence, and the predominance of the metropolitan sector is evident in both. In 1980 more than three-quarters of the population lived and worked in metropolitan areas. The difference between the proportion living and working in metropolitan areas is only one percentage point (77 versus 78) showing the small impact of the metropolitan-nonmetropoiitan commuting interchange. Altogether there are 28.1 million persons off the diagonal of this table, indicating the large number and proportion (one-third) of the persons working in a different residence group than their residence. Two out of three of these commuters were involved in the interchange between the central city and the balance of the metropolitan area, and of these 14.5 million commuted from ring to central city and
Glenn
462
V. Fuguitt
Table I. Population
by place of work and by place of residence for size-of-place groups (in thousands), United States of America 198O* __._._~.. .--._--. --._ Size of place of work ---..-__~I---. Metro Nonmetro _.. _ ._ ---_ -_ Total cc Other 10,000+ 2500-9999 LT 2500 Residence category - ---._. ~..._.. _~ --. Metro 25,396 20.502 47 130 4668 49 cc 42.172 14.557 26,856 185 149 425 Other
Nonmetro 10,000+ 2500-9999 LT 2500
4168 3515 12.402
Total
87,653
35.918
32,604
100.0 100.0
41.0 29.0
37.2 48.1
100 IO8 651
134 125 821
3127 269 2102
104 2074 1880
703 939 6948
5732
4254
9145
Percentage distribution
Place of work Residence * Population
6.5 4.7 _---__.__.--.. -..___ 16 and over at work reporting place of work in the United States of America.
4.9 4.0 . .‘..
10.4 14.2
Table 2. Commuting rates by place of residence, decomposed by size of place* ___. -_ __.. -.._ - .._..___.._._ - __--Size of place Metro Residence category
.- ._._. -
Total -.
-..-..-
cc
.-.--
Metro CC In out Net
60.7 - 19.3 41.4
Metro other In out Net
13.6 -36.3 -22.7
11.1 -34.5 -23.4
62.5 -24.8 37.7
62.0 -41.1 20.9
-
. ._ Other 57.3 -18.4 38.9
Nonmetro ---_ 2500-9999
-.__ 10,000+ -.
LT 2500
0.4 -0.2 0.2
0.4 -0.2 0.2
2.6 -0.5 2.1
-
0.3 -0.4 -0.1
0.3 -0.4 -0.1
1.9 -1.0 0.9
1.2 -2.4 -1.2
4.4 -3.2 I.2
-
6.5 -2.5 4.0
50.4 - 16.7 33.7
I.3 -3.1 -1.8
4.2 -3.6 0.6
3.0 -7.7 -4.7
-
53.5 -26.7 26.8
I.0 -5.2 -4.2
3.4 -6.6 -3.2
5.7 -16.9 -11.2
10,000+
In out Net 2500-10,000 Itl out Net LT 2500 In out Net
17.7 -43.9 -26.2 ~... ..__ * Rate per 100. Base is resident population
___-_ and rows sum to the total.
almost 5 million lived in the city and worked in the ring. An additional 22% of all these commuters lived in one nonmetropolitan category and worked in another and only 1 in 10 moved across metroboundaries in their poiitan-nonmetropolitan journey to work. The numbers in this matrix also show that despite the deconcentration of jobs in recent years work-
7.6 -15.2 -7.6
-
. __..._
places are still considerably more concentrated than residences. Three-quarters of the movement between central city and ring consists of commuters from the ring to the central city, two-thirds of the movemen? between metropoiitan and nonmetropolitan are commuters living in nonmetropolitan and working in metropolitan, and 71% of the commuters across size classes within nonmetropolitan areas are going to work in larger sized groups.
Commuting
and the Rural-Urban
There is more to the story, however. Table 2 presents in-, and out- and net rates of commuting for each size of place residence group, decomposed by the contribution of the other size groups to the commuting interchange. The base for the rates is the resident working population in the respective size group, and each set of row rates sums to the total. The total rates (down the first column) show the major difference is between the three urban place categories and the other metropolitan and less than 2.500 category. The latter two categories had much lower in-rates, higher out-rates and a net loss of working population. In contrast all three urban place categories had in-rates of 60, including that the number of in-commuters was equal to 60% of the resident population. The out-rates were only onethird as large for central cities and for places over 10,000 in size so that the net gain of workers through commuting was equal to 40% of the resident population. Though towns of 10,000 or more in nonmetropolitan areas might be thought of as more autonomous than metropolitan central cities, the extent of intercommuting with its impact on residents and the workforce is seen here to be just as great for this size group as for metropolitan central cities. The 2500-9999 category is an interesting blend of nonmetropolitan rural and urban. That is, it has an in-rate as high as the other city categories, but its out-rate is about as large as the less than 2500 category. Consequently, this category has the largest interchange of workers and residents. It is remarkable that the number of commuters employed in cities of this size equal 60% of the resident population, and at the same time 40% of this resident population travels to another type of place to work. The components in the body of the table show that the in-, and out-, and net-rates for both nonmetropolitan city size groups are primarily based on the interchange with nonmetropolitan rural areas. Similarly, rates for the metropolitan groups are primarily based on the interchange between central city and ring. On both the metropolitan and nonmetropolitan side, the movement of commuters across the metropolitan boundary represents a very small component of the rates. Generally, the signs of the rates show the net movement of commuters up the urban hierarchy, including the relatively small interchange between nonmetropolitan cities 2500 up to 10,000 in population and cities 10,000 and over.
Hierarchy
463
Percent 50
-_.
-
--..
__
150
Subgroups
Figure 1. Percent workers
commuting place group.
to another
size of
Figure 1 shows that differentials in the likelihood of commuting across the groups tend to be small but are generally consistent with prior research. Women are somewhat less likely than men to commute, men with low income are less likely to commute than those making $20,000 or more a year, and persons with less than 12 years of schooling are less likely than those with four years of college. Persons employed in manufacturing are somewhat more likely to work in a different size group than the population as a whole, but those employed in producer services have the same proportion commuting across groups as the total population. There are also modest differences among these groups in the extent to which commuting is up the size-of-place hierarchy. Figure 2 gives concentration ratios of the number of commuters working in larger divided by the number working in smaller size-ofplace groups. For example, 20.7 million U.S. workers commuted to larger size groups and 7.4 million to smaller size groups. The ratio of these two numbers indicates that 2.8 persons went to large size groups for each individual going to a smaller group. As expected, overall, women and higher status individuals are more likely to commute up the hierarchy, as are persons employed in producer services. Ratm 5;.
._
.._
_._
--..
.-.
75
I
c
n
Commuting
for population
subgroups Subgroups
HOW is commuting social and economic
structured subgroups
by size-of-place for of the population?
Figure 2. Ratio: commuters to higher/commuters size classes.
to lower
464
”
Glenn
TOTAL
YALE
FEUILe
U.INC. LT ,lCT
M.IWC. c?CT.
LT HIOH SCHOOL
COLL. 4 YRS..
MAN”FACT.
PROD
”
(represented by each middle bar). An examination of specific commuting streams indicates the low ratios due to relatively more equal interchanges between the metropolitan ring and nonmetro cities. Particularly in geographically large SMSAs, the rural population living in the metropolitan ring category could well be attracted to jobs in nearby nonmetropolitan cities.
SERVICES
Subgroups
Figure 3. Ratio: commuters to higher/commuters
V. Fuguitt
to lower
size classes.
Figure 3 gives these ratios separately for persons commuting within metropolitan areas, between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan, and within nonmetropolitan areas. The difference by sex is particularly notable for commuting within nonmetropolitan areas, where more than three times as many women moved to larger than to smaller size groups, whereas two times as many men did so. Overall, according to Fig. 3, men making $20,000 or more earnings are much more likely to work in a larger size group than their residence, as compared with low income men. This is entirely due to the within-metropolitan commuters, however, and there is a slight reversal of this tendency for within-nonmetropolitan comThe same pattern holds for the other muters. socioeconomic variable, education. An examination of specific commuter streams indicates that this is largely due to the interchange between smaller nonmetropolitan cities and rural areas, as these cities overall tended to attract low SES commuters and actually had a net out-commuting rate for males with incomes over $20,000 a year. Those employed in manufacturing are somewhat less likely to commute up the hierarchy within metropolitan areas than all workers, but that is not so in nonmetropolitan areas. Thus overall the commuting pattern reflects a little more deconcentration of manufacturing employment out of the central city to the ring, than is true for smaller nonmetropolitan cities and rural areas. Jobs in producer services continue to be found largely in cities serving as centers for information and the administration of the economy. Consistent with this, the overall metropolitan area concentration ratio for persons employed in this industry is equal to the highest in the figure, with more than four times as many commuters moving up as down the urban hierarchy, and the ratio for this industry also is the highest within nonmetropolitan areas. Throughout Fig. 3, the ratios tend to be lowest between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas
In sum, the commuting patterns for subgroups of the population show some expected variations, but also suggest some special patterns for nonmetro areas. In particular, higher status commuters are on balance less likely to be commuting to larger size groups within nonmetropolitan, but those employed in manufacturing are somewhat more likely to be doing so. These points aside, the major finding here is that the dominant trend for all subgroups is to move up the rural-urban hierarchy. The smallest ratio shown in the figure is 1.4, and most show at least twice as many commuters moving up as down.
Conclusions
Despite the deconcentration of population, industry and trade that was especially marked in the 1970s. commuting in 1980 was predominantly toward larger places in the rural-urban hierarchy. Most of this was specifically from the balance of the metropolitan area to the central city, and from rural areas to nonmetropolitan cities. Levels of commuting were high across the hierarchy, and most commuting was within metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, with relatively little between the two residence types. Nonmetropolitan places of greater than 10,000 had in- and out-commuting rates similar to those for metropolitan central cities. Smaller nonmetropolitan cities were less differentiated from rural areas, for though their in-commuting rates were as high as larger cities, they also had high out-commuting rates. with almost all of this interchange with nonmetropolitan rural areas. Differences in commuting patterns by gender, socioeconomic status and industry were small, but generally in the directions expected on the basis of prior research. Women, or those with low income, or low educational status, for example, are almost as likely to commute across size-of-place groups as men or those with high income or education. There are some differences in direction, however, with women and those with higher income and education more likely to go to larger places, particularly in metropolitan areas, but those with low income and education more likely to go from rural areas to the smaller nonmetropolitan city group, which overall
Commuting and the Rural-Urban experienced residents.
a net commuting loss of its high income
Although we found a strongly concentrating commuting pattern, this may not have been characteristic in 1980 of more urbanized parts of the nation, such as the northeast. Regional differences need to be considered in further work. To avoid disclosure of information about individuals, this U.S. Census file is aggregated across all places in a size-class. Our results, then do not accurately represent any individual place. There is undoubtedly some specialization among communities, with some serving more as residences for commuters, and others more as magnets for workers. But the overall trends, showing high levels of in- and out-commuting across levels of the hierarchy, is an accurate portrayal of the size classes as a whole. This research shows that the death of the ruralurban distinction has been exaggerated: most people still look to cities for jobs. Also, metropolitan domination of nonmetropolitan areas has been overstated: most people living in nonmetropolitan areas still work in nonmetropolitan areas. The latter finding might not seem remarkable since commuting is considered in making the metropolitan delineation, and most people commute short distances, but altogether two-thirds of the nonmetropolitan population in 1980 resided in counties adjacent to a metropolitan area. This indicates that many people who could have commuted to major cities and their environs instead chose and were able to work in a small town or rural setting. Parr (1987) points to a number of factors which lead to inter-level commuting: an individual’s preference for residing at a level of the hierarchy other than the one in which he is employed, the possibility that an individual may not be able to afford the cost of living at the level of the hierarchy where his or her work is located, and the possible benefits of some physical separation of employment and residence. The continuing net preference for low density living (Fuguitt and Brown, 199(l), the possibility of lower housing costs, and the continued concentration of many types of jobs in densely settled areas has evidently overcome the time and monetary costs of commuting for many people who are living in rural areas. The high levels of rural out-commuting shown here point to the fact that an increasingly important small town (and rural area) function is to provide a satisfactory place to live for people who work elsewhere. Serving as a residence for commuters provides a means to bring income into a community just as surely as through a manufacturing plant or a successful retail store (Parr, 1987) and this is analogous to the possible gain provided by elderly
Hierarchy
465
residents living on transfer payments (Summers and Hirschl, 1985). The high levels of in-commuting in nonmetropolitan cities raise policy questions for which there are no easy answers. Is the fact that people commute in to smaller nonmetropolitan cities or rural areas to work a ‘leakage’ of human capital and wealth out of the community (at levels shown here, perhaps hemorrhage is a more apt metaphor), or is it a benign ‘spread effect’ providing the opportunity for rural people to fulfil their residential preferences for lowdensity living? The answer must depend on whether attention is focused on the small city itself or the broader community area. One thing is sure: with such high levels of in- and out-commuting, these results make a mockery of small towns going it alone in development planning to provide jobs for their residents. The principle of organizing community efforts at the county or subregional level has long been a truism among professionals, but unfortunately this is still not always accepted by local leaders. An understanding of commuting patterns should be an important basis for planning area development programs. An important current policy concern related to commuting in metropolitan areas is the so-called ‘mismatch’ between jobs and people, as low-income people are left in the ghettos of major cities while jobs move to the suburbs (Kasarda, 1976; Richter, 1988; Frey and Speare, 1988). On the nonmetropolitan side, much of the concern about area and regional development also can be couched in more general mismatch terms. Deavers (1990), for example, points out that for every additional educational level, there was an increase between 1974 and 1986 in the lifetime earnings penalty for rural employment, rising to nearly 40% for college graduates. Thus an important middle ground between moving jobs to people or people to jobs may be providing the means for more individuals to commute. Although the present data set shows a great deal of commuting across levels of the rural-urban hierarchy, even by low-income people with low levels of education, a more detailed examination of specific subgroups and the directions of their move should be useful in assessing the role of commuting in development. This should go beyond the present data set to consider as well people who may not be in the workforce because of a place-of-work-place-ofresidence mismatch. Finally, a word about more recent trends. Detailed commuting data from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population are probably several years away, and present plans indicate that a tabulation such as this
Glenn
466
one by size of place will be prohibitively expensive. Available data indicate the 1980s saw a decline in nonmetropolitan levels, particularly in areas remote from metropolitan centers. Less than half of the counties and small towns gained in population, whereas this was true of more than two-thirds of these units over the 1970s. Throughout most of the decade, nonmetropolitan employment growth lagged behind metropolitan indicating a slowdown also in the deconcentration of jobs. Consequently, if a 1990 work-residence tabulation could be made by these size-of-place groups, we would expect a more centralized pattern of employment, and probably also more commuting up the rural-urban hierarchy. During the 198Os, more rural and nonmetropolitan residents may have had to seek employment in larger urban centers, and many of those who were able may have preferred commuting to migration. Actual commuting data for 1990 could modify or even contradict these speculations, but it certainly seems safe to say that overall the most recent decade saw less deconcentration of residents and economic activities than did the 1970-1980 turnaround decade. We are still a long way from the fabled ‘information society’, where distance does not matter.
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and Development Review 14. 595-628. W.H. and Speare, A. Jr (1988) Regionul and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States.
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1960
Cenws
of
Vol. I. Churucteristics of the Population
(Chapter A. Number of Inhabitants. Part 1. U.S. Summary). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Wheeler, J.O. (1967) Occupational status and work-trips: a minimum distance approach. Social Forces 45, 508515.
Jo~tmul of Hltrcrl Sllct1ie.s.Vol. 7. No. J. pp. 459-466. 1991 Printed in Great Britain
Commuting and the Rural-Urban Hierarchy’ Glenn V. Fuguitt Department
of Rural
Sociology,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706. U.S.A.
Madison,
WI
Abstract - The purpose of this paper is to consider the relation between commuting and the settlement structure, with particular attention to rural and nonmetropolitan areas. I examined commuting flows between metropolitan central cities, other metropolitan areas, nonmetropolitan places with more than 10,000 people, those with 2500-10.000 people, and other rural areas. Despite the deconcentration of population, industry and trade that was especially marked in the 1970s. commuting in 1980 was predominantly toward larger places in the ruralurban hierarchy, and particularly from rural areas and the other metropolitan category to cities. Overall levels of commuting were high, and most were within either nonmetropolitan or metropolitan areas. Smaller nonmetropolitan places particularly had high proportions of both in- and out-commuters. Differences in commuting flows by gender, socioeconomic status and industry were small, but generally in the directions expected on the basis of prior research. The findings reveal a high degree of work-residence interdependence among settlement units in nonmetropolitan America, with social and economic differences in commuting flows representing an important aspect of community structure.
Commuting
and the rural-urban
growth down the urban hierarchy, outwards within metropolitan areas from core to ring, outwards from metropolitan to nonmetropolitan areas, and outwards from the old industrial core of the northeast to the south and west (Hall and Hay, 1980; Heaton and Fuguitt, 1980). This was only partially reversed during the 1980s along the metropolitan-nonmetropolitan dimension (Fuguitt et al., 1989; Beale and Fuguitt, 1990).
hiearachy
With the deconcentration of population and economic activities over this century in the advanced nations, there has been a transformation in rural and urban communities and in their interrelations. In the United States of America and many other countries this process seemed to culminate in the 1970s when deconcentration extended well beyond the peripheries of principal cities into remote rural areas (Frey, 1988; Fuguitt, 1985). Whereas in the nineteenth century, the city was both a political and a functional area, today urban settlement and activities extend far beyond city boundaries, and the relations among
An important aspect of this transformation, having particular significance for small towns and rural areas, is commuting. The increasing separation of home and work has made for a more diffuse pattern of settlement just as it has helped to tie together elements of the urban hierarchy, including rural and urban areas. Yet we know comparatively little about the relation between commuting and the settlement structure, particularly as it pertains to rural and nonmetropolitan areas. This is the subject of the research reported here.
cities and between cities, towns and rural areas have become ever more complex. Trends for the United
States of America in the 1970s showed a spread of -_-.-.--_~ .--~_-. ’ Paper prepared for the 14th European Congress of Rural Sociology, Geissen, Federal Republic of Germany, 16-20 July 1990. This research was supported by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of WisconsinMadison and Agriculture and Rural Economy Division, Eoonomic Research Service. U.S. Department of Agriculture, through a co-operative agreement, and by the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, through a grant from the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The assistance of Michael Reibel is gratefully acknowledged.
Using a special file from the 1980 U.S. Census, I have examined the place-of-work/place-of-residence interrelations among a five-category size-of-place classification for the United States of America as a whole. The objective of this research is to answer the following questions: 459
460
Glenn
(1) What is the extent and direction of commuting among elements of the size-of-place hierarchy, and how does this help to structure the relationship between rural and urban, metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas? At least prior to recent years one would expect a major commuting stream going from the balance of the metropolitan area (often called the ring) to the central city, since there has been a significant residential deconcentration in metropolitan areas in this century. Elsewhere the earlier pattern should include relatively less commuting, but that primarily from lower to higher units in the hierarchy, as rural areas and small towns become more closely integrated with the economic activities in larger urban and metropolitan areas. More recent trends however, have included the further deconcentration of population along with manufacturing, business and retail trade, so that smaller cities and nonmetropolitan areas gained more than larger places and metropolitan areas in the 1970s. This dispersed growth pattern has led to questions about the extent to which residence and economic activities continue to be structured hierarchically, as constraints on location are lessened, and we perhaps even move into an ‘information society’ (Cleveland, 1985). Does commuting in 1980 continue to support and help maintain a rural-urban hierarchy? One would at least expect a relatively high level of commuting from residence to work across the five size of place groups. In metropolitan areas, there has been increased ‘back-commuting’ from the central city to the balance of the metropolitan area, and comparative studies have shown an increase in the degree of intercounty commuting in nonmetropolitan areas (Frey and Speare, 1988; Krout, 1983). Though overall the net direction might still be toward the higher level units, there should at least be significant counter-streams reflecting a greater homogeneity across all types of settlement. This is the prediction of Parr (1987), who starts with the traditional central place model and incorporates both specialized goods and commuting flows. He predicts net flows to be up the hierarchy, but with a complex pattern of inter-level commuting. Some previous work has appeared to assume that nonmetropolitan commuting patterns are primarily a movement of nonmetro residents to metro jobs, as metropolitan zones of influence extend outward with ‘Race differences were not considered here because there are very few nonmetropolitan Subsequent work by region dimension.
blacks outside the South. should include the racial
V. Fuguitt improvements in transportation to include most of nonmetropolitan America (Berry and Gillard, 1977). An initial reaction to the unexpected nonmetropolitan growth in the early 1970s was that it was primarily a reflection of metropolitan residential deconcentration, presumably accompanied by increased levels of commuting to metropolitan areas. It soon became apparent, however, that there was also renewed population growth in areas remote from large cities, and commuting studies in the 1970s revealed that most of the commuting in nonmetropolitan areas was within the nonmetropolitan sector (Taaffe et al., 1980; Bowles and Beale, 1980). In a preliminary analysis of these data, I found this also was true in 1980, with considerable commuting within the nonmetropolitan counties of the nation (Fuguitt et al., 1989). These results underscore the need to determine commuting patterns between nonmetropolitan cities and rural areas in seeking to understand the present situation.
(2) How do the patterns of commuting across the size of place groups differ by sex, socioeconomic status, and industry? The division of labor among cities, towns and rural areas is structured along a number of dimensions, including gender, socioeconomic status and industrial specialization.’ There are notable variations among size-of-place groups in residential composition and in the types of jobs available for workers, and one might also expect differences in the propensity to commute among population subgroups. A consideration of such differentials is therefore necessary for understanding the nature of commuting across the rural-urban hierarchy. Previous research on commuting has shown a difference in the extent and nature of commuting for men and women, and by socioeconomic status (e.g. Goldstein and Mayer, 1964; Wheeler, 1967; Pisarski, 1987). Though some findings have differed for nonmetropolitan areas (Clemente and Summers, 1975) a recent nationwide analysis showed nonmetropolitan differentials to be similar to that reported for metropolitan-based research (Bowles and Beale, 1980). Overall, women are less likely to commute longer distances than men, probably due in part to greater likelihood of having part-time work. On the other hand, jobs held by women traditionally are more likely to be found in cities, so one would expect women to be more likely to commute up the size-of-place hierarchy than men. Research also has shown higher status individuals to be more likely to commute. There has been a considerable deconcentration of higher status residences around cities, and although jobs having greater economic rewards have deconcentrated,
Commuting and the Rural-Urban they continue to be differentially located in cities. Thus one would expect those with such occupations to be more likely to commute up the urban hierarchy than those with tower status jobs. The same is true for certain services, particularly producer services (professional, business and repair services), which are identified with the major metropolitan centers of the nation. On the other hand, the deconcentration of manufacturing to small towns and rural areas was a major element in the resurgence of population and employment growth in the 1970s. Thus for manufacturing one might expect less commuting up to larger places than is true for all workers, as well as more employment by residents living within small towns and rural areas that does not involve commuting across levels of the hierarchy. Data As part of a census monograph project, I obtained a special i-in- 100 public use microdata file of the 1980 U.S. Census, in which the population was classified both by metropolitan-nonmetropolitan status and by community size. From this I was able to make a matrix of workers by place of residence and place of work using the following categories in a size-of-place hierarchy: (1) metropolitan central cities; (2) the metropolitan remainder, sometimes called the ring; (3) nonmetropolitan places with 10,000 or more inhabitants; (4) nonmetropolitan places with 25009YYYpeople; and (5) the nonmetropo~itan remainder including those in smaller villages and the open country. In the United States of America, counties are classed as metropolitan if they include cities, which with their surrounding thickiy settled territory include at least 50,000 peopIe.3 In addition, adjacent counties closely integrated to the metropolis through commuting and other indicators are included in metropolitan areas. Thus the nonmetropolitan --._---. ..-___ .. .._.-.. ‘If the central city or cities have less than 50.~~0 population, the area must have at least 100.000 population. (See U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1983.) “The reference population here is 88,088,OOO as estimated from the special I-in-100 Public Use Microdata file of the 1980 U.S. Census. This includes persons 16 and over at work during the census week in April 19X0(approximately 96.6 million according to published census reports) less those whose place of work was in an outlying area or foretgn country, abroad or at sea, or who did not report a place of work. In addition I dropped 136,OUO persons who lived in nonmetropolitan urbanized areas in the Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic, East South Central and Mountain census divisions. The Bureau of the Census classified nonm~tropolitan persons living in urbanized areas (thickly settled territory around large cities) in the 10.000 and over size category. Dropping these persons removed most of those who did not actually live in cities over 10,Ot.M).
Hierarchy
461
territory is generally beyond the immediate environs of large cities. The ‘other metropolitan’ category in this scheme (often called the ring) is three-quarters urban, but these cities and thickly settled areas are located close to, and are presumably satellites or functionally part of the larger urban places designated as central cities. The nonmetropolitan less than 2500 category is entirely rural by U.S. Census definition, but about 20% of the residents there live in incorporated villages with less than 2500 people, perhaps another 20% live in unincorporated villages (that is, not official government units) and the others in the open country. The commuting detected by this approach is that between but not within the size groups, and the number of levels in the hierarchy between home and work is not an indication of distance traveled. For example, a person living in a rural area next to a city and working in that city might travel only a short distance. Consequently, the proportions of these counted as commuters are higher than found in comprevious research identifying intercounty muters. On the other hand, one could commute a long distance within one of the categories, as from one nonmetropolitan city of 2500-9999 to another, and not be counted as a commuter here. Our concern here is about how different types of areas or places in the rural-urban hierarchy are interrelated through the process of commuting. Findings Commuting represents a substantial interrelation among units of the size-of-place hierarchy. Table 1 shows the distribution of the 88 million employed workers classified by pIace of residence and by place of work according to the five residence groups.4 The two bottom lines are the total distributions of the population by place of work and by place of residence, and the predominance of the metropolitan sector is evident in both. In 1980 more than three-quarters of the population lived and worked in metropolitan areas. The difference between the proportion living and working in metropolitan areas is only one percentage point (77 versus 78) showing the small impact of the metropolitan-nonmetropoiitan commuting interchange. Altogether there are 28.1 million persons off the diagonal of this table, indicating the large number and proportion (one-third) of the persons working in a different residence group than their residence. Two out of three of these commuters were involved in the interchange between the central city and the balance of the metropolitan area, and of these 14.5 million commuted from ring to central city and
Glenn
462
V. Fuguitt
Table I. Population
by place of work and by place of residence for size-of-place groups (in thousands), United States of America 198O* __._._~.. .--._--. --._ Size of place of work ---..-__~I---. Metro Nonmetro _.. _ ._ ---_ -_ Total cc Other 10,000+ 2500-9999 LT 2500 Residence category - ---._. ~..._.. _~ --. Metro 25,396 20.502 47 130 4668 49 cc 42.172 14.557 26,856 185 149 425 Other
Nonmetro 10,000+ 2500-9999 LT 2500
4168 3515 12.402
Total
87,653
35.918
32,604
100.0 100.0
41.0 29.0
37.2 48.1
100 IO8 651
134 125 821
3127 269 2102
104 2074 1880
703 939 6948
5732
4254
9145
Percentage distribution
Place of work Residence * Population
6.5 4.7 _---__.__.--.. -..___ 16 and over at work reporting place of work in the United States of America.
4.9 4.0 . .‘..
10.4 14.2
Table 2. Commuting rates by place of residence, decomposed by size of place* ___. -_ __.. -.._ - .._..___.._._ - __--Size of place Metro Residence category
.- ._._. -
Total -.
-..-..-
cc
.-.--
Metro CC In out Net
60.7 - 19.3 41.4
Metro other In out Net
13.6 -36.3 -22.7
11.1 -34.5 -23.4
62.5 -24.8 37.7
62.0 -41.1 20.9
-
. ._ Other 57.3 -18.4 38.9
Nonmetro ---_ 2500-9999
-.__ 10,000+ -.
LT 2500
0.4 -0.2 0.2
0.4 -0.2 0.2
2.6 -0.5 2.1
-
0.3 -0.4 -0.1
0.3 -0.4 -0.1
1.9 -1.0 0.9
1.2 -2.4 -1.2
4.4 -3.2 I.2
-
6.5 -2.5 4.0
50.4 - 16.7 33.7
I.3 -3.1 -1.8
4.2 -3.6 0.6
3.0 -7.7 -4.7
-
53.5 -26.7 26.8
I.0 -5.2 -4.2
3.4 -6.6 -3.2
5.7 -16.9 -11.2
10,000+
In out Net 2500-10,000 Itl out Net LT 2500 In out Net
17.7 -43.9 -26.2 ~... ..__ * Rate per 100. Base is resident population
___-_ and rows sum to the total.
almost 5 million lived in the city and worked in the ring. An additional 22% of all these commuters lived in one nonmetropolitan category and worked in another and only 1 in 10 moved across metroboundaries in their poiitan-nonmetropolitan journey to work. The numbers in this matrix also show that despite the deconcentration of jobs in recent years work-
7.6 -15.2 -7.6
-
. __..._
places are still considerably more concentrated than residences. Three-quarters of the movement between central city and ring consists of commuters from the ring to the central city, two-thirds of the movemen? between metropoiitan and nonmetropolitan are commuters living in nonmetropolitan and working in metropolitan, and 71% of the commuters across size classes within nonmetropolitan areas are going to work in larger sized groups.
Commuting
and the Rural-Urban
There is more to the story, however. Table 2 presents in-, and out- and net rates of commuting for each size of place residence group, decomposed by the contribution of the other size groups to the commuting interchange. The base for the rates is the resident working population in the respective size group, and each set of row rates sums to the total. The total rates (down the first column) show the major difference is between the three urban place categories and the other metropolitan and less than 2.500 category. The latter two categories had much lower in-rates, higher out-rates and a net loss of working population. In contrast all three urban place categories had in-rates of 60, including that the number of in-commuters was equal to 60% of the resident population. The out-rates were only onethird as large for central cities and for places over 10,000 in size so that the net gain of workers through commuting was equal to 40% of the resident population. Though towns of 10,000 or more in nonmetropolitan areas might be thought of as more autonomous than metropolitan central cities, the extent of intercommuting with its impact on residents and the workforce is seen here to be just as great for this size group as for metropolitan central cities. The 2500-9999 category is an interesting blend of nonmetropolitan rural and urban. That is, it has an in-rate as high as the other city categories, but its out-rate is about as large as the less than 2500 category. Consequently, this category has the largest interchange of workers and residents. It is remarkable that the number of commuters employed in cities of this size equal 60% of the resident population, and at the same time 40% of this resident population travels to another type of place to work. The components in the body of the table show that the in-, and out-, and net-rates for both nonmetropolitan city size groups are primarily based on the interchange with nonmetropolitan rural areas. Similarly, rates for the metropolitan groups are primarily based on the interchange between central city and ring. On both the metropolitan and nonmetropolitan side, the movement of commuters across the metropolitan boundary represents a very small component of the rates. Generally, the signs of the rates show the net movement of commuters up the urban hierarchy, including the relatively small interchange between nonmetropolitan cities 2500 up to 10,000 in population and cities 10,000 and over.
Hierarchy
463
Percent 50
-_.
-
--..
__
150
Subgroups
Figure 1. Percent workers
commuting place group.
to another
size of
Figure 1 shows that differentials in the likelihood of commuting across the groups tend to be small but are generally consistent with prior research. Women are somewhat less likely than men to commute, men with low income are less likely to commute than those making $20,000 or more a year, and persons with less than 12 years of schooling are less likely than those with four years of college. Persons employed in manufacturing are somewhat more likely to work in a different size group than the population as a whole, but those employed in producer services have the same proportion commuting across groups as the total population. There are also modest differences among these groups in the extent to which commuting is up the size-of-place hierarchy. Figure 2 gives concentration ratios of the number of commuters working in larger divided by the number working in smaller size-ofplace groups. For example, 20.7 million U.S. workers commuted to larger size groups and 7.4 million to smaller size groups. The ratio of these two numbers indicates that 2.8 persons went to large size groups for each individual going to a smaller group. As expected, overall, women and higher status individuals are more likely to commute up the hierarchy, as are persons employed in producer services. Ratm 5;.
._
.._
_._
--..
.-.
75
I
c
n
Commuting
for population
subgroups Subgroups
HOW is commuting social and economic
structured subgroups
by size-of-place for of the population?
Figure 2. Ratio: commuters to higher/commuters size classes.
to lower
464
”
Glenn
TOTAL
YALE
FEUILe
U.INC. LT ,lCT
M.IWC. c?CT.
LT HIOH SCHOOL
COLL. 4 YRS..
MAN”FACT.
PROD
”
(represented by each middle bar). An examination of specific commuting streams indicates the low ratios due to relatively more equal interchanges between the metropolitan ring and nonmetro cities. Particularly in geographically large SMSAs, the rural population living in the metropolitan ring category could well be attracted to jobs in nearby nonmetropolitan cities.
SERVICES
Subgroups
Figure 3. Ratio: commuters to higher/commuters
V. Fuguitt
to lower
size classes.
Figure 3 gives these ratios separately for persons commuting within metropolitan areas, between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan, and within nonmetropolitan areas. The difference by sex is particularly notable for commuting within nonmetropolitan areas, where more than three times as many women moved to larger than to smaller size groups, whereas two times as many men did so. Overall, according to Fig. 3, men making $20,000 or more earnings are much more likely to work in a larger size group than their residence, as compared with low income men. This is entirely due to the within-metropolitan commuters, however, and there is a slight reversal of this tendency for within-nonmetropolitan comThe same pattern holds for the other muters. socioeconomic variable, education. An examination of specific commuter streams indicates that this is largely due to the interchange between smaller nonmetropolitan cities and rural areas, as these cities overall tended to attract low SES commuters and actually had a net out-commuting rate for males with incomes over $20,000 a year. Those employed in manufacturing are somewhat less likely to commute up the hierarchy within metropolitan areas than all workers, but that is not so in nonmetropolitan areas. Thus overall the commuting pattern reflects a little more deconcentration of manufacturing employment out of the central city to the ring, than is true for smaller nonmetropolitan cities and rural areas. Jobs in producer services continue to be found largely in cities serving as centers for information and the administration of the economy. Consistent with this, the overall metropolitan area concentration ratio for persons employed in this industry is equal to the highest in the figure, with more than four times as many commuters moving up as down the urban hierarchy, and the ratio for this industry also is the highest within nonmetropolitan areas. Throughout Fig. 3, the ratios tend to be lowest between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas
In sum, the commuting patterns for subgroups of the population show some expected variations, but also suggest some special patterns for nonmetro areas. In particular, higher status commuters are on balance less likely to be commuting to larger size groups within nonmetropolitan, but those employed in manufacturing are somewhat more likely to be doing so. These points aside, the major finding here is that the dominant trend for all subgroups is to move up the rural-urban hierarchy. The smallest ratio shown in the figure is 1.4, and most show at least twice as many commuters moving up as down.
Conclusions
Despite the deconcentration of population, industry and trade that was especially marked in the 1970s. commuting in 1980 was predominantly toward larger places in the rural-urban hierarchy. Most of this was specifically from the balance of the metropolitan area to the central city, and from rural areas to nonmetropolitan cities. Levels of commuting were high across the hierarchy, and most commuting was within metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, with relatively little between the two residence types. Nonmetropolitan places of greater than 10,000 had in- and out-commuting rates similar to those for metropolitan central cities. Smaller nonmetropolitan cities were less differentiated from rural areas, for though their in-commuting rates were as high as larger cities, they also had high out-commuting rates. with almost all of this interchange with nonmetropolitan rural areas. Differences in commuting patterns by gender, socioeconomic status and industry were small, but generally in the directions expected on the basis of prior research. Women, or those with low income, or low educational status, for example, are almost as likely to commute across size-of-place groups as men or those with high income or education. There are some differences in direction, however, with women and those with higher income and education more likely to go to larger places, particularly in metropolitan areas, but those with low income and education more likely to go from rural areas to the smaller nonmetropolitan city group, which overall
Commuting and the Rural-Urban experienced residents.
a net commuting loss of its high income
Although we found a strongly concentrating commuting pattern, this may not have been characteristic in 1980 of more urbanized parts of the nation, such as the northeast. Regional differences need to be considered in further work. To avoid disclosure of information about individuals, this U.S. Census file is aggregated across all places in a size-class. Our results, then do not accurately represent any individual place. There is undoubtedly some specialization among communities, with some serving more as residences for commuters, and others more as magnets for workers. But the overall trends, showing high levels of in- and out-commuting across levels of the hierarchy, is an accurate portrayal of the size classes as a whole. This research shows that the death of the ruralurban distinction has been exaggerated: most people still look to cities for jobs. Also, metropolitan domination of nonmetropolitan areas has been overstated: most people living in nonmetropolitan areas still work in nonmetropolitan areas. The latter finding might not seem remarkable since commuting is considered in making the metropolitan delineation, and most people commute short distances, but altogether two-thirds of the nonmetropolitan population in 1980 resided in counties adjacent to a metropolitan area. This indicates that many people who could have commuted to major cities and their environs instead chose and were able to work in a small town or rural setting. Parr (1987) points to a number of factors which lead to inter-level commuting: an individual’s preference for residing at a level of the hierarchy other than the one in which he is employed, the possibility that an individual may not be able to afford the cost of living at the level of the hierarchy where his or her work is located, and the possible benefits of some physical separation of employment and residence. The continuing net preference for low density living (Fuguitt and Brown, 199(l), the possibility of lower housing costs, and the continued concentration of many types of jobs in densely settled areas has evidently overcome the time and monetary costs of commuting for many people who are living in rural areas. The high levels of rural out-commuting shown here point to the fact that an increasingly important small town (and rural area) function is to provide a satisfactory place to live for people who work elsewhere. Serving as a residence for commuters provides a means to bring income into a community just as surely as through a manufacturing plant or a successful retail store (Parr, 1987) and this is analogous to the possible gain provided by elderly
Hierarchy
465
residents living on transfer payments (Summers and Hirschl, 1985). The high levels of in-commuting in nonmetropolitan cities raise policy questions for which there are no easy answers. Is the fact that people commute in to smaller nonmetropolitan cities or rural areas to work a ‘leakage’ of human capital and wealth out of the community (at levels shown here, perhaps hemorrhage is a more apt metaphor), or is it a benign ‘spread effect’ providing the opportunity for rural people to fulfil their residential preferences for lowdensity living? The answer must depend on whether attention is focused on the small city itself or the broader community area. One thing is sure: with such high levels of in- and out-commuting, these results make a mockery of small towns going it alone in development planning to provide jobs for their residents. The principle of organizing community efforts at the county or subregional level has long been a truism among professionals, but unfortunately this is still not always accepted by local leaders. An understanding of commuting patterns should be an important basis for planning area development programs. An important current policy concern related to commuting in metropolitan areas is the so-called ‘mismatch’ between jobs and people, as low-income people are left in the ghettos of major cities while jobs move to the suburbs (Kasarda, 1976; Richter, 1988; Frey and Speare, 1988). On the nonmetropolitan side, much of the concern about area and regional development also can be couched in more general mismatch terms. Deavers (1990), for example, points out that for every additional educational level, there was an increase between 1974 and 1986 in the lifetime earnings penalty for rural employment, rising to nearly 40% for college graduates. Thus an important middle ground between moving jobs to people or people to jobs may be providing the means for more individuals to commute. Although the present data set shows a great deal of commuting across levels of the rural-urban hierarchy, even by low-income people with low levels of education, a more detailed examination of specific subgroups and the directions of their move should be useful in assessing the role of commuting in development. This should go beyond the present data set to consider as well people who may not be in the workforce because of a place-of-work-place-ofresidence mismatch. Finally, a word about more recent trends. Detailed commuting data from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population are probably several years away, and present plans indicate that a tabulation such as this
Glenn
466
one by size of place will be prohibitively expensive. Available data indicate the 1980s saw a decline in nonmetropolitan levels, particularly in areas remote from metropolitan centers. Less than half of the counties and small towns gained in population, whereas this was true of more than two-thirds of these units over the 1970s. Throughout most of the decade, nonmetropolitan employment growth lagged behind metropolitan indicating a slowdown also in the deconcentration of jobs. Consequently, if a 1990 work-residence tabulation could be made by these size-of-place groups, we would expect a more centralized pattern of employment, and probably also more commuting up the rural-urban hierarchy. During the 198Os, more rural and nonmetropolitan residents may have had to seek employment in larger urban centers, and many of those who were able may have preferred commuting to migration. Actual commuting data for 1990 could modify or even contradict these speculations, but it certainly seems safe to say that overall the most recent decade saw less deconcentration of residents and economic activities than did the 1970-1980 turnaround decade. We are still a long way from the fabled ‘information society’, where distance does not matter.
V. Fuguitt partment of Agricultural Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison. Wisconsin, U.S.A. Frey, W.H. (1988) Migration and metropolitan decline in developed countries: a comparative study. Popufution
and Development Review 14. 595-628. W.H. and Speare, A. Jr (1988) Regionul and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States.
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Russell Sage, New York. Fuguitt, G.V. (1985) The nonmetropolitan turnaround. Annual Review uf Sociology 11, X9-280. Fuguitt, G.V. and Brown, D.L. (1990) Residential preferences and population redistribution 1972-1988. Demog-
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G.V., Brown, D.L. and Beale, C.L. (1989) Rural and Small Town America. Russell Sage, New York.
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Goldstein. S. and Mayer, status differentials in
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