Rural population decline in the 1980s: Impacts of farm structure and federal farm programs

Federal farm program benef i ts accrue d ispropor t ionate ly to large-scale farm operators, and cont inue targely because of the pol i t ical inf luence of their benef ic iar ies. Some writers argue that these payments tem the movement of labor out of agr iculture, u l t imate ly reducing the pace of rural depopulat ion. Here, a theoret ica l model l inking farm program payments to populat ion loss is presented and empi r ica l ly est imated for the years 1980-90. Larger farm program payments asa share of total cash market ing receipts were assoc iated with greater populat ion losses f rom rural count ies. This result holds after contro l l ing for other economic var iables af fect ing populat ion migrat ion f rom rural areas. Key words. " economic deve lopment, farm programs, populat ion decl ine. Rural out-migration has complex economic, so-cial, institutional, technical, cultural, political, and geographic causes. Between 1980 and 1990, certain farming-dependent counties lost over 20 % of their residents. 1During the same period, the federal government paid $88.7 bil-lion to farmers through farm programs (U.S. Department of Commerce 1993). One-third of these payments--$29.3 bill ion--were made to farms located in 494 counties classified by the USDA as farming-dependent, even though the total population (farm and nonfarm) of these counties represented less than 8 % of the total nonmetropolitan population. On average, each farm in the farming-dependent counties re-The authors are associate professor and professor in the Depart