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. Social capital and educational attainment are now more important predictors of rural prosperity than economic diversity. Prosperous rural non-core counties are associated with higher rates of expenditure and the distribution of federal expenditures across these counties exhibits positive spatial dependence.