New research by the University of Kentucky details and evolution in the state's rural economy.

The study by Blueprint Kentucky take stock of population, employment, and industry trends across 85 rural counties.

One notable finding is the reversal of a longstanding trend in rural population decline, but due to remote and hybrid work options that gained in popularity during the Covid pandemic.

Things are turning around.

Allison Davis, executive director of Blueprint Kentucky, within the Martin Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Kentucky, says rural counties account for about one third of Kentucky's total employment, with small and mid-sized businesses making up a larger share of rural Kentucky's economy than in urban areas.

Kentucky is, I often, I often state that I think Kentucky is a really cool diversity of industry, but particularly some of our cities, Lexington, for example.

Rural areas are not quite as diverse.

Over 50% of their population comes from manufacturing, from health care and from retail.

A lot of our really rural places don't have any manufacturing, so when we're talking about government, we're talking about a school system, school systems, a local government, health care and retail.

And you know those I'd like to see more diverse portfolios.

I like to see more attention paid for.

You know, how do we think about career ladders for folks who might be in our service sector so that they know that there's a future for them to have a quality of life?

But, you know, there's we just don't see a lot of like, financial services, accounting services, lawyers.

Well, we do see some lawyers, but a lot of, kind of creative industries and so forth.

I love to see a little bit more of that.

Right.

Just so that, you know, I think about eastern Kentucky and western Kentucky that lost, you know, mining and manufacturing.

So that one when one industry goes away, you're okay.

And that's what Lexington is so great about, is if one industry or one company goes, we are surrounded by just a whole host of other companies, industries to support us.

Care to share with us a main takeaway that we haven't already talked about?

Well, I wanted to talk just briefly about why our population has changed.

Because I talk about this a lot.

Because I think we just say, oh, population increases or decreases in understanding why, our urban areas in Kentucky grew because of the in-migration of of migrants from outside the country, you know, likely to Louisville and Lexington because of higher ed and because some of our industry there.

But about 85% of our population growth came from international, migration.

That's huge.

In our more rural places, why we see population decline.

Some of it is because people are leaving, but a lot of it is because we're not healthy.

And, you know, we look at, you know, our births minus our deaths.

You know, we're not having babies as much as we used to.

But we're also our life expectancy in rural places is lower.

And so that upsets me when I see that the reason we're losing population is because we have this sort of net natural decrease in the population.

So I just I think it's a really interesting statistic and one to think about, it's not just population goes up, goes down, but why.

Right.

Yeah, that's very interesting.

I know there's been some intentionality around maternal mortality and trying to improve maternal health, but we're still probably trying to climb higher on that.

Yeah, absolutely.

We have you know, one of my biggest fears, we do a lot of work in rural health and work with rural hospitals is closures of maternity wards.

And, you know, and being able to give birth in the place that you live, that is a huge determinant of when people are going to move to a place they don't have to plan, you know, when they're going to give birth to a baby.

And so that just breaks my heart to see these centers closing, because it just means more people are going to have to get up and go, yeah, well, we thank you, Doctor Davis.

It's been a pleasure.

We hope to the next, study that you do.

I to have you back.

Thank you so much, Horace.

Thank you.