What does it mean to be ‘rural?’
By : Lucas Koch & Courtney Vahle, Ed.D.
Published On: June 11, 2025
The definition of rural varies depending on the source. In today’s blog post, we discuss common definitions of “rural,” when they are best used, and why picking the right definition matters.
What does it actually mean for a place to be rural? Missouri, and the Midwest as a whole, contains large swaths of rural area, but deciphering exactly how much is a challenge. Rurality is a more subjective definition than one might think, and the best definition of it depends on the issue at hand. Additionally, some places are considered more rural than others whether that is determined objectively, such as through some metric, or subjectively, by listening to peoples’ opinions.
The United States government utilizes at least five different definitions of rural between the US Department of Agriculture, US Census Bureau, Health Resources & Services Administration, National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Center for Education Statistics. Each institution uses a definition tuned to fit their organization’s needs, as some interpretations fit with a certain field better than others.
Some definitions of rural simply mean “not urban.” Generally, urban areas are easier to define than rural ones since they have many easily identifiable, common features, such as a dense spatial concentration of people and high levels of non-agricultural industry. The United States Census Bureau takes advantage of this by defining rural as the opposite of urban, stating rural areas “encompass all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area.” This definition can give an adequate baseline, but many studies, especially ones looking into features of rural areas, require a more nuanced definition to more accurately differentiate between types of rural areas.
In education research, classifications created by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) are usually standard. The NCES categories begin with the US Census bureau’s classifications of urban and rural and further sort school districts into one of four buckets: City, Suburban, Town, and Rural. Population density (i.e. how many people live in a particular place) differentiates cities from suburbs, while geographic isolation (i.e., how far from a city or suburb a location lies) delineates towns from rural areas.
Within each of those four categories are three subgroups. For City and Suburban districts, the subgroups are Large, Midsize, and Small, based on total population. Meanwhile, Town and Rural districts divide into Fringe, Distant, and Remote subgroups based on distance from urban centers. This results in twelve total classifications. You can find more information on the NCES classifications here.
The NCES classifications provide a standard for defining rurality, but are not perfect. One of the challenges is that the NCES classifications are intended to be common across all states. This means that each classification must incorporate the extremes of the country, not just the state of Missouri. Consequently, a district a short drive away from Kansas City, MO is considered Rural, just like a district in the Bootheel, but also just like a remote town in Alaska. Undeniably, there is tremendous variation in what life looks like for people living in the many communities that the NCES designates as Rural.
Another challenge in using the NCES classifications is that it fails to account for anything beyond distance from a population center and strict population size thresholds to organize areas. So, two nearly identical communities could be classified differently if their populations varied by a dozen people on either side of the rigid threshold. Furthermore, some communities have access to hospitals, childcare, and movie theaters while residents of other communities have to drive long distances for these services, even if they are a similar distance from an urban center. If two school districts are the same distance from an urban center, say Columbia, MO, but one is located 0.5 miles from a hospital and one is located 25 miles from medical care, does that impact our view of its rurality?
In response to these drawbacks, some researchers sought to create a continuous measure of rurality. In the paper “Community assets and relative rurality index: A multi-dimensional measure of rurality,” Kate Nelson and PRiME contributor Tuan Nguyen developed the rurality index. The rurality index quantifies population size/density and geographic isolation, like the NCES classification, but also incorporates the availability of services and amenities, such as hospitals, banks, childcare centers, movie theaters, and libraries, in an area to create a continuous measure. You can find more information on the rurality index on their website, or by reading Nelson and Nguyen’s original paper.
In the accompanying district-level map, we have rescaled the national rurality indices for Missouri only. Districts with rurality index closer to zero are less rural, and indices close to one are what we consider to be the most rural in Missouri.
There is no absolute correct way to define rural areas, but different conceptualizations serve different purposes. The Census Bureau and NCES Classifications are both good, broad standards that are applicable across the large areas where fine-grained detail is less important.
For the PRiME Center’s purposes, we view Nelson and Nguyen’s rurality index as the best way to define rurality. Missouri is a state with many rural communities, and we think it’s important to recognize the differences between them. These differences are important, not just for resident’s commute times and access to services, but also for the challenges that schools serving those communities face. The rurality index incorporates these differences by offering a continuous measure, which is able to classify schools by accounting for services that may be most impactful on the education of students within the school’s area, such as libraries, hospitals, and childcare centers in addition to the classic measures of population density and geographic isolation.
Later this summer, the PRiME Center will release a full-length report on PRiME Growth Scores in rural Missouri schools. Similar to our Beating the Odds Report, we examine the most rural schools serving Missouri’s students and celebrate those schools that are promoting exceptional student growth in English Language Arts and Math.
Sources & Further Reading
Arnold, M. L., Biscoe, B., Farmer, T. W., Robertson, D. L., & Shapley, K. L. (2025). How the Government Defines “Rural” Has Implications for Education Policies and Practices. Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest (NJ1); ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED497221
Hawley, L. R., Koziol, N. A., Bovaird, J. A., McCormick, C. M., Welch, G. W., Arthur, A. M., & Bash, K. (2016). Defining and Describing Rural: Implications for Rural Special Education Research and Policy. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 35(3), 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/875687051603500302
Koziol, N. A., Arthur, A. M., Hawley, L. R., Bovaird, J. A., Bash, K. L., McCormick, C., & Welch, G. W. (2015). Identifying, Analyzing, and Communicating Rural: A Quantitative Perspective. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 30(4), 1.
Nelson, K. S., & Nguyen, T. D. (2023). Community assets and relative rurality index: a multi-dimensional measure of rurality. Journal of Rural Studies, 97, 322-333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.12.025
Weeks, John. (2010). Defining Urban Areas. 10.1007/978-1-4020-4385-7_3.
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The definition of rural varies depending on the source. In today’s blog post, we discuss common definitions of “rural,” when they are best used, and why picking the right definition matters.