Supported by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs) are a trusted source of economic and community development data.
The North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD), the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC) and the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD) partnered to conduct a multi-region Baseline Survey in 2024 and have recently published the open access data. This data establishes an important baseline for future research and can inform policy decisions, community development strategies and targeted interventions to address regional challenges and opportunities.
The Baseline Survey 2024 explored topics related to household, business and community well-being. It aimed to learn more about the conditions, issues and challenges faced by rural and urban communities and their residents in each region. Later this year, the Western Rural Development Center (WRDC) will conduct the same survey. When the final regional survey is completed, survey data will be available for the entire United States.
The RRDCs were established by the Rural Development Act of 1972. Each serves a U.S. region and taps its Land-grant University network to form innovative research and Extension partnerships focused on rural development.
“NIFA’s RRDCs play a unique role in USDA's work to enhance rural prosperity,” NIFA National Program Leader Dr. Edwin Lewis said. “As they collaborate on national issues that span regions, they are also linking the research and educational outreach capacity of the Land-grant System with communities, local decision-makers, families, farmers and ranchers to help address a broad spectrum of development challenges and issues.”
Based on NCRCRD’s initial North Central Region household survey conducted in 2022, the Baseline Survey 2024 contained questions adapted and expanded from the original survey’s broad spectrum of topics as well as questions created to gather data on new topics such as the recreation economy, perceptions and impacts of extreme weather, and residents’ intentions to move or stay and the reasons behind those decisions.
“We sought to develop these three, open access datasets to help researchers, Extension specialists and educators, policy makers and economic development practitioners to better understand trends in the individual regions and their states,” said Dr. Zuzana Bednarik, NCRCRD Research and Extension Specialist who led the survey’s development and implementation.
SRDC Director Dr. John J. Green collaborated on the survey. “Using a common questionnaire and methods, this project provides data that allow for both within and between region analyses,” he said. “Additionally, the data supplement the other data sources typically used to inform regional development efforts.”
NERCRD Director Stephan J. Goetz added that, “with deliberate sample weighting, the survey is highly representative of rural areas in the Northeast, which are often underrepresented because of their smaller populations.”
“We are already examining the data to better understand households’ reasons for leaving rural areas, for example,” Goetz said. “In future work, we will examine the role that the recreational economy can play in rural economic development.”
All three datasets can be found on the Purdue University Research Repository.