About the Index

Relevant publications

For nearly a century, researchers have been trying to define rurality in different ways for different uses. Originally, rurality was used to define a space that is clearly delineated from urban- industrial areas. For practical purposes, most measures of rurality define the rural-urban divide based on population density and size, in part because population size and density information are readily available and easy to apply. However, many have argued that, in post-industrial societies, rurality must be multi-dimensional to include other measures such as environmental, social, and economic resources.

Rurality as a concept is more than just how physically isolated people are from others. Our new measure, the CARR index, addresses these challenges by incorporating measures of services and amenities along with traditional measures of rurality. The CARR index offers several advantages over previous rurality measures.

  • First, it conceptually addresses basic life functions and well-being by evaluating the availability of modern services and amenities. The index incorporates various community assets that meet fundamental needs.
  • Second, by focusing on the semi-permanent assets of communities, the CARR index helps policymakers and government agencies identify communities with resources that can be utilized for growth and sustainability.
  • Third, researchers have noted that broad, aggregated spatial analyses of service access can overlook significant variability within these areas. Therefore, finer spatial scales are necessary to understand how services and amenities are distributed. In this context, CARR’s higher spatial resolution captures within-community diversity, highlighting issues like disparities in access to healthy food and healthcare. Because CARR is measured at the block-group level, it is applicable to both urban and rural areas, such as counties or census tracts.
  • Fourth, as a continuous measure, CARR is more sensitive to small changes compared to categorical measures, allowing for more consistent tracking of rurality changes over time due to shifts in population density or service availability.
  • Fifth, CARR’s continuous nature provides greater nuance and detailed analysis compared to most categorical measures. It can be used flexibly in modern regression analyses, allowing it to be divided into deciles or interacted with other variables to explore the relationships of rurality alongside other factors. Finally, incorporating community assets into CARR alongside traditional rurality measures offers an intuitive and consistent approach to evaluating rurality.

Contact Info/Requests

We will continue to work on collecting various measures of community assets and relative rurality and will update our CARR index over time. If you have any questions, or are interested in collaborating, please contact Kate Nelson, Ph.D., University of Missouri, via email: katherinenelson@missouri.edu or Tuan D. Nguyen, Ph.D, University of Missouri, via email: tuan.nguyen@missouri.edu. If you find any errors in the data or documentation, please email us.

Acknowledgement

This work is derived from a research project by Nelson and Nguyen (2023).

For the full publication, see:

The original CARR dataset can be found at:

  • Nelson, K., & Nguyen, T. (2022). Community assets and relative rurality index [Data set]. In Community assets and relative rurality index: A multi-dimensional measure of rurality (1.0.0, Vol. 97, pp. 322–333). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8072187

R scripts relevant to the development of CARR and the 2023 publication in the Journal of Rural Studies can be found at Nelson’s github repo for the project.

We welcome comments and suggestions. Any errors remain our sole responsibility.