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Tim Peterson, a farmer from Monument in far western Kansas, knew he lived in a remote area.

But the vastness of it hit him last fall when he campaigned for a seat in the state Senate.

His legislative district covers 17 counties, and is about the size of the states of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Yet its population of 60,000 people is less than that of Lawrence.

Peterson lost the race but said the campaign was an eye-opener about the emptying of that part of the state.

"They say our largest export is our children," he said.

Peterson said that everywhere he went, folks seemed to be bickering about how to improve the economy.

"I think they were fighting over who gets to turn out the lights when everything goes away," he said.

Rural decline exaggerated?

The decline of rural Kansas, in fact large portions of the Midwest, has been framed as an epic out-migration, prompting numerous proposals from government and policy-makers, such as a new Homestead Act. Fifty-four of Kansas' 105 counties have fewer people now than they did in the early 1900s.

But a group of economists at Kansas University says reports of the decline of rural Kansas have been greatly exaggerated, and that attempts to revive the countryside have been misguided.

Photo by Bill Snead

An aerial view of Rawlins County in the extreme northwest corner of Kansas. Farms are often miles apart here.

"A lot of rural areas are doing really well, and the ones that are doing the best are no longer rural areas," said Peter Orazem, a Koch visiting professor of business economics.

Orazem, Arthur Hall, executive director of the KU Center for Applied Economics, and Georgeanne Artz, an extension program specialist for the economics department at Iowa State University, have produced two recent studies on rural development.

Misdiagnosis?

Orazem argues the decline of rural Kansas is misdiagnosed because there are many rural counties that have thrived over the past few decades.

The economists have detected a "statistical curiosity" that has big policy-making implications.

Every decade, the Census Bureau classifies counties as urban, metropolitan and rural. When rural counties grow to a certain population they are reclassified as urban or metropolitan.

That leaves policy-makers examining the counties that aren't doing well to determine what is wrong, instead of trying to copy what the developing rural counties, many of which grew faster than the national average, did right.

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This distortion can lead to some wrong-headed policies to stop the reported decline in rural population, argues Orazem and his colleagues.

They say to see what is needed for rural counties, determine what the common denominator is for the ones that have grown rapidly.

The Census Bureau identifies and groups areas based on population and varying levels of population density, but officials there declined to comment on the findings of Orazem and his colleagues, saying the bureau wasn't qualified, nor did it have the resources to provide assistance concerning uses of rural-urban information.

Rural health depends on cities

The rural counties that have outpaced national population growth are located next door to cities and urban centers, the economists say.

The counties become the bedroom communities. Workers are lured to the cities by higher wages, but they want to live in a smaller-town atmosphere to raise children and take advantage of lower housing costs. They are willing to commute up to an hour each way to access a better job, the economists said.

Photo by Bill Snead

A long-abandoned house in western Kansas sits in the middle of a pasture, bookended between two trees.

While that is good news for the Eudoras and Tonganoxies of the world, what does this phenomenon mean for the counties in westernmost Kansas?

"If you're a remote rural area, there really are not a lot of policy options that will help you out," Orazem said.

But, he said, there are options.

Cooperation is required

Growth is helped by being located next to a job center because population centers attract labor and capital and the ripple effects of the economy will affect the surrounding counties, he said.

So instead of counties in western Kansas competing against each other for economic development, they should cooperate and select a place that will be the focus of development efforts.

Orazem said one of the objections to cooperating is that the county getting the new business will improve its tax base. He asks why not merge counties and combine tax bases?

County lines were drawn 150 years ago to ensure that no county seat was more than a day's horse ride away.

"That might not be reasonable in 2005," he said with automobiles, mail, telephone and e-mail to help conduct business.

Get real

Such ideas may sound good on paper, but aren't grounded in reality, according to Marci Penner, a rural development advocate from Inman.

"That sounds like it was written from a large office in a large city," Penner said. "There are serious issues in rural Kansas, that's for sure, but it's such a complex problem."

Photo by Bill Snead

A rainy day on the main street of Johnson City, the seat of Stanton County in western Kansas.

She said the idea of picking a hub in a rural area and devoting all economic development energies to growing that hub wouldn't be embraced.

"That's really hard for a small town to take. Why should we tell them you can't make an effort to make your own town thrive?" said Penner, who is director of the Kansas Sampler, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and sustaining rural culture. She also is co-chairwoman of a rural task forced appointed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Orazem, who said the reports were based on Census Bureau numbers as opposed to field research and visits to rural counties, agreed with Penner that his advice is hard to swallow.

"It's difficult to get people to say that their own place may be less important than the place one county away." But, he added, "What has been done is failing, and failing miserably. Business as usual is a recipe for disaster."

Another notion by Orazem is that agricultural tourism, which has gained a lot of attention in trying to spur rural development, is probably not a worthy goal.

"If what you want is skilled labor and higher-paying jobs, tourism is neither. That is not a recipe for long-term growth," he said.

Penner said agricultural tourism was in its infancy. "The jury is still out," she said.

Studies should focus on people

Penner said policy-makers needed to listen to rural residents before trying to engineer solutions.

"I've gone to all these towns and talked to them. You see the desperation, the life is being sucked out of these towns, but you also see inspirational stories. There's a lot going on under the surface," Penner said.

Photo by Bill Snead

The small northwest Kansas town of McDonald and its grain elevator sits next to U.S. Highway 36 in Cheyenne County.

In addition to population decline, those remaining in many remote areas are elderly. Smith County's 65-and-older population is at 27.9 percent, more than twice the national figure for that age group.

Peterson, the farmer from Monument, said the KU economists, who will submit one of their reports for scholarly review, may be on to something in theory.

"If you could step back and look at things objectively, regionalizing economic development may be a good idea," Peterson said.

However, he said, "It's going to take a real change in attitudes of people to pull that off."

He said if the area continued to slide downhill in population, change may occur. "When you watch your churches and schools decline, and there is no visible social activity, and the volunteers are getting stressed out, it can be a bit depressing," he said.