Rural population matters, but demography is not destiny

This chapter rethinks the relationship between population dynamics and the changing social and economic organization of rural communities. We recommend that rural scholars focus more on the consequences of population changes in addition to their determinants. Our principal insight is that rural population dynamics and community structure are mutually interdependent. Rural community structure and change contribute to changes in the number of rural persons, how they are distributed across the landscape, and their social, economic and demographic characteristics. Similarly, population dynamics are a determinant of change in community structure and wellbeing. We propose that rural scholars open the ‘black box’ that has heretofore often supplied mechanistic explanations of how population change affects rural society, and explore the mutual interrelationships that link rural population dynamics and rural community structure, organization and change. We observe that rural population dynamics matter, but demography is NOT destiny.