A systematic description and evaluation of the socioeconomic conditions of nonmetropolitan United States provides important information for policymakers and researchers in rural education. This book is one of a series aimed at converting the statistics of the 1980 census into an analytical profile of major changes in U.S. life. The volume furnishes a demographic and sociological composite of rural and small-town United States drawn from census figures. The study begins with consideration of recent rural-urban and metropolitan-nonmetropolitan population distribution trends. Chapter 2 summarizes distribution changes from the nonmetropolitan "population turnaround" of the 1960s until post-1980 estimates. Chapter 3 reports on the rural-urban components of rural growth. Chapter 4 considers trends in age, sex, fertility, and mortality. Chapter 5 examines racial and ethnic composition and distribution. Changes in household composition are examined in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 examines the decline in fertility, focusing on subregional, ethnocultural, and rural-urban differences. Distribution changes in employment and social status are discussed in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 considers changes in overall industrial composition of the population by residence since 1960. Chapter 10 gives particular attention to employment, sources of income, and residence of the farming population, examining the decreasing correspondence of these three indicators. Income sources, distributions, and median differentials are considered in Chapter 11, along with a discussion of income and family composition variables. Chapter 12 is a detailed comparison of population and economic characteristics of cities and villages, classified by size. The final chapter offers conclusions regarding convergence, subregional variability, and prospects for the future of rural and nonmetropolitan areas. This book contains numerous tables, charts, bibliographies, a subject index, and a name index. (TES)