Demographic Chartbook: Profiling Change in the Great Plains2
Geographic Territory of the Great Plains
What is the Great Plains? The definition of the Great Plains is debated. Typically, it refers to the territory from Montana to Minnesota and down to New Mexico and
Texas. In this study, a 12-state area is used, including Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota,
Texas, and Wyoming. Combined, these states represent approximately 40% of all U.S. land area outside of Alaska and Hawaii. Rather than narrow the territory to select
counties within these 12 states (i.e., delineation typically used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture), all 1,009 counties are included, specifically for those Federal
policymakers who represent these states.
A more in-depth discussion of different ways to delineate the Great Plains can be found in:
Donald L. Bogue and Calvin L. Beale, Economic Areas of the United States, Free Press, 1961.
S.R. Johnson and Aziz Bouzaher (eds.), Conservation of Great Plains Ecosystems: Current Science, Future Options, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995.
Highlights
Figure 1. The metropolitan counties tend to lie on the outside borders of the region.
Table 1. The Great Plains is sparsely populated. Only 14% (N=142) of the counties in the region are metropolitan. In contrast, 36% (N=358) are rural (i.e.,
lacking a city of at least 2,500 people). Nearly 23% of counties in Texas are classified as metropolitan, the highest proportion in the Great Plains
region. North Dakota and South Dakota have the highest concentration of rural counties with 72% and 68%, respectively.
Table 2-3. Nearly 39% of the counties in the region are “farm-dependent” (i.e, at least 20% of their total labor and proprietor income is derived from farming).
Approximately 14% of the counties in the region have persistent poverty (i.e., a poverty rate of at least 20% for the past four decades). These are
typically counties that include Native American reservations.
