Rural prosperity and federal expenditures, 2000-2010

Rural development policy in the US lacks coordination and coherence, but 
sustaining prosperous rural communities should be a primary aim. We identify rural non-
core counties that remained prosperous during the recent recession and use regression 
analysis to model the relationship between rural prosperity and per capita federal 
expenditures. The number of prosperous rural non-core counties increased from 2000 to 
2010.