CALVIN L. BEALE In considering how to introduce the subject of rural population change in st the 21 Century, I ?nd myself re?ecting on my own experience as a demographer for the U. S. Department of Agriculture. When I arrived at the Department, the post-World War II modernization of farming was well under way. Each year, my colleague Gladys Bowles and I had the unpopular task of announcing how much the farm population had decreased in the prior year. It was hard to say that the phenomenon was someones fault. Dramatic reductions in labor requirements per unit of agricultural output were occurring everywhere and not just in the United States. But politically, blame had to be assigned, and whichever political party was not in the White House was certain to place the blame squarely on the current administration. The demographic consequences of this trend were major. In a 22-year period from 1941 to 1962, the net loss of farm population from migration and cessation of farming averaged over a million people per year. It took eight years after the war before an administration was willing to begin to talk about the need to diversify rural employment. By that time, farm residents had already become a minority of rural people. However, well into the 1970s, I continued to receive inquiries from people who still equated rural with farm or who could not envision what rural-nonfarm people did for a living.

and Demographic Context.- Rural America through a Demographic Lens.- The Rural Rebound and its Aftermath.- Four Critical Socio-Demographic Themes.- The Changing Faces of Rural America.- Changing Livelihoods in Rural America.- Fifty Years of Farmland Change.- Changing Fortunes.- Case Studies of Population and Society in Different Rural Regions.- Rural Hispanic Population Growth.- Social Integration Among Older in-Migrants in Nonmetropolitan Retirement Destination Counties.- Agricultural Dependence and Changing Population in the Great Plains.- Gaming, Population Change, and Rural Development on Indian Reservations.- Metro Expansion and Nonmetro Change in the South.- Changing Land Use in the Rural Intermountain West.- Does Second Home Development Adversely Affect Rural Life?.- Housing Affordability and Population Chang in the Upper Midwestern North Woods.- Social Change and Well-Being in Western Amenity-Growth Communities.- Community Evaluation and Migration Intentions.- Poverty and Income Inequality in Appalachia.- Welfare Reform Amidst Chronic Poverty in the Mississippi Delta.- New Analytic Directions and Policy Implications.- Explorations in Spatial Demography.- Policy Implications of Rural Demographic Change.