(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Latest Fed Survey Shows Nonmetro Residents Have Dimmer Views on Economy [1]
['Joe Belden', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2024-07-24
Nonmetro areas are worse off financially than metropolitan areas, and the gap is consistent and widening, according to a new report recently released by the Federal Reserve Board.
Based on the Fed’s latest consumer survey, the study found that in 2023, 68% of nonmetro and 73% of metro respondents answered that they are “at least doing okay financially.” The gap of 5 percentage points is within the poll’s margin of error.
What is Nonmetro? The nonmetro/metro designations are based on the federally defined Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Nonmetropolitan areas do not have a city of 50,000 or more residents and do not have strong economic ties to a county that does have such a city. Nonmetropolitan is frequently used as a surrogate definition for “rural.”
The study says, “People living in nonmetro areas had lower levels of financial well-being than those living in metro areas.” For all survey questions with published data, there is a consistent and recently growing gap between metro and nonmetro since the first Fed survey in 2013.
The study also notes that there is “a small, but persistent, difference in financial well-being between those living in urban and rural areas.”
This Federal Reserve report is perhaps best known for its stark finding that a large proportion of U.S. households would have difficulty paying for a $400 emergency expense. In the 2023 survey, 36% of metro and 43% of nonmetro respondents said they could not pay such a $400 amount with cash or the equivalent (e.g., a credit card paid off in one month).
The gap in how nonmetro and metro residents answered this question has been at least 6 percentage points in every survey since 2020. But it was never more than 5 percentage points between 2015 and 2019.
The study also reports on respondents’ self-assessment of the local economy in their areas. There the nonmetro-metro gap is substantially wider. For 2023, in nonmetro 29% and in metro 44% of those surveyed think their local economy is good or excellent. This report is based on the Federal Reserve Board’s annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), which “measures the economic well-being of U.S. households and identifies potential risks to their finances.” This latest survey was of over 11,000 adults in October 2023.
Related
Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://dailyyonder.com/latest-fed-survey-shows-nonmetro-residents-have-dimmer-views-on-economy/2024/07/24/
Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/
