麦肯锡-小城镇，大机遇：释放美国农村的潜力 (英文 35 页)

引言

"美国乡村"一词常让人联想到一系列速记短语的拼贴画——"心脏地带"、"小镇美国"、"飞越之地"——这些标签试图概括城市与郊区之外的广袤社区。然而这些称谓遮蔽的远比揭示的更多。美国乡村并非铁板一块，这里居住着七分之一的美国人（2023年约4600万人口），涵盖多样化的地理环境、经济形态与文化特征。虽然乡村社区具有某些共性特征，且常与都市中心存在显著差异，但它们各自蕴含的优势、挑战与机遇同样拒绝任何简单化的概括。

这种复杂性因"乡村社区"缺乏统一定义而加剧。此外，由于地域发展与分类标准的变化，具体社区的乡村属性认定具有流动性。例如，随着经济增长、城市扩张和人口增加，乡村县常被重新划分为都市县。正如乡村创新中心（CORI）所指出的："明星乡村县往往演变为平庸的都市县"，这种变化扭曲了美国乡村历史经济表现与民生成果的真实图景。

用实证数据说明：研究者发现若采用1950年的"乡村"定义进行分析，这些县域的实际增长速度其实超过了都市区。即便在行政分类变更后，新晋都市县的许多居民仍保持着强烈的乡村认同。这种动态变化的城乡光谱，既让分析工作复杂化，也使关于美国乡村衰败或进步的叙事难以简单定论，必须通过细分研究和定制方案来应对多元的地方情境与需求。

尽管美国乡村规模庞大且意义重大，相关研究仍显不足。为填补这一空白，麦肯锡经济流动研究院于2025年设立了乡村社区专项研究。我们的使命是深入理解乡村社区面临的独特挑战与机遇，助力形成可产生实质成果的可行见解。2025年3月发布的首份报告《谁是美国乡村？》通过分析揭示：这些社区体量庞大、多元动态且充满机遇。

本报告旨在深化认知，从人口结构与宏观经济趋势中提炼未来发展的障碍与机遇。通过数据驱动的方法，我们识别并分析了美国乡村社区的若干原型（详见附录研究方法）。

报告采用三重分析视角：

• 地域视角：第一章界定六类美国乡村原型，为理解当今塑造乡村的经济社会文化动力提供框架

• 成果视角：第二章考察各地居民生存现状，深入分析不同原型区的民生福祉与经济流动性趋势

• 策略视角：第三章提出促进乡村经济发展的路径，并附可提升经济流动性的实践案例。鉴于乡村类型的差异性，部分策略对特定社区更具适用性

这些洞察共同勾勒出增强乡村社区韧性、促进发展与机遇的可行路径。

Introduction 

The term “rural America” often conjures a patchwork of shorthand phrases—“the heartland,” “small-town America,” 

“flyover country”—an attempt to encompass the vast expanse of communities outside the nation’s cities and suburbs. Yet these labels obscure more than they reveal. Rural America is not a monolith. It is home to one in seven Americans 

(approximately 46 million people in 20231) and encompasses a vast array of geographies, economies, and cultures. While rural communities share some attributes and often differ from urban centers in meaningful ways, they also contain a multitude of strengths, challenges, and opportunities that defy broad generalizations.

This complexity is compounded by the lack of a consistent definition of what constitutes a rural community.2 Moreover, the rural classification of individual communities is fluid, because both places and classification criteria evolve. For instance, rural counties are often reclassified as urban or metropolitan because of economic growth, urban sprawl, and population expansion. And as the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) has noted, 

“Superstar rural counties often grow into run-of-the-mill urban counties,” distorting the historical economic performance and well-being outcomes of rural America.3 

To put that claim into empirical terms, one group of researchers found that if analyses used the 1950 definition 

of “rural,” they would find that these counties have actually grown faster than urban ones.4 Even with the fluidity of classification, many residents in counties newly considered urban maintain a strong rural identity. This evolving rural–urban continuum complicates both analysis and the narrative of rural America’s decline or progress, demanding segmented analyses and tailored solutions to address diverse contexts and needs.

Despite rural America’s scale and significance, it remains underresearched. To address this gap, in 2025, we established a dedicated focus on rural communities within the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility.5 Our mission is to better understand the unique challenges and opportunities facing rural communities and help develop actionable insights that can achieve meaningful results. Our first publication, in March 2025, examined the question, “Who is rural America?”6 Our analysis explored these communities and found them to be large, diverse, dynamic, and full of opportunity.

This report seeks to deepen our understanding of rural America and uncover insights from demographic and macroeconomic trends about barriers and opportunities for future growth. Using a data-driven approach, we identified and analyzed a set of archetypes of rural communities across the United States (for more details, see the research methodology in the appendix). 

The report is organized in three sections, each with a different lens: 

— Places. Chapter 1 defines six archetypes of rural communities in America, providing a framework for understanding the economic, social, and cultural dynamics that shape rural America today.

— Outcomes. Chapter 2 examines how people are doing across rural America. It delves into resident outcomes and well-being as well as trends in economic mobility across the rural archetypes.

— Strategies. Chapter 3 offers approaches to accelerate economic development in rural America along with actionable examples to improve economic mobility. Given the variation in rural archetypes, some of these strategies may be more relevant for certain communities than others.

Together, these insights illuminate pathways to enhance resilience, growth, and opportunity across rural communities.

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