The Revised ERS County Typology: An Overview

This report describes an expanded and revised version of the Economic Research Service's 1979 classification of nonmetro counties, commonly called the ERS typology. The classification has been widely used by researchers, policy analysts, and public officials as a source of information about the economic and social diversity characterizing rural America. The revised typology classifies counties designated as nonmetro in 1993 into one of six nonoverlapping types that indicate the county's primary economic activity: farming-dependent, mining-dependent, manufacturing-dependent, government-dependent, services-dependent, and nonspecialized. The revised typology also classifies counties according to five other overlapping types with special relevancy for rural policy: retirement-destination. Federal lands, commuting, persistent poverty, and transfers-dependent. This analysis focuses on the distributions of nonmetro counties across the types and provides brief economic and sociodemographic profiles for each type. Particular attention is given to population and economic changes during the 1980's.