Breaking rural dependence
“It is my belief,” Sherlock Holmes told Dr. Watson in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” that “the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” Holmes’ observation casts a literary pall over my recent American Habits articlepromoting the virtues of country living.
While a generation of young people has discovered the benefits of close-knit small-town and rural life, this newfound enchantment must not become a spell that renders them blind to the problems of their new communities. No, contra Holmes, pastoral villages do not distinguish themselves by their “hellish cruelty” and “hidden wickedness,” but one trait may surprise potential residents of a libertarian bent: Non-metropolitan areas’ lower tax burdens and lighter regulatory footprint rest uneasily beside alarmingly high levels of government dependence. Reliance on state and federal funding characterizes virtually every level of life in small communities.
This problem, like most social maladies, begins with the government itself. Thanks to the expansion of the federal grant-in-aid system, whole state economies depend on Uncle Sam. Federal funding provides a whopping 45% of West Virginia’s state revenue; Kentucky is comparable. Nearly two-thirds of all counties the U.S. government designates as “federal/state government-dependent” — 278 of the 443 counties that derive 15% or more of their income from the state or federal government — are rural, up from 218 in 2012.
These grants often impose federal regulators’ desires on rural communities, rather than needs rising organically from the community. Out-of-state money targeted to non-metropolitan areas pours in from a dizzying array of agencies: the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Rural Economic Development Loan and Grant Program, the Rural Cooperative Development Grant, and many others, not counting farm subsidies and state programs. One can hardly blame these municipalities for turning Bastiat’s fictional proposition of living at everyone else’s expense into reality. Yet legislative mandates needlessly expand the number of people enrolled in government programs.
An Obama-era bill, which was signed in 2010 and took effect in 2014, put millions of children on the federal dole. The act created the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which held that school districts where at least 40% of students automatically qualify for free school lunches (based on enrollment in means-tested programs or status as, e.g., an immigrant) will receive federal funds to furnish “free” meals to every student in the district. In the world of government central planners, there is no such thing as a free lunch a la carte: To participate in CEP, school districts mustalso offer “free” school breakfasts. The Biden-Harris administration lowered the threshold from 40% to 25% in 2023. A total of 8,872 school districts nationwide participated in CEP in the 2024-2025 school year — an increase of 1,176 districts in a year. Overall, three out of four eligible school districts now take part. Additionally, nine states have instituted universal school lunch programs: California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont.
If Aquinas properly defined justice as rendering “to each one his right,” taxpayers should not be forced to underwrite the local banker alongside the unemployed single mother. The Community Eligibility Provision teaches young people to expect their twice-daily bread at the hand of the government and does so inside the very institution tasked with their education.
Washington need not indoctrinate rural youth to receive federal benefits; previous inducements sufficed. While a tiny portion of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients live in small-towns, rural residents have a higher SNAP enrollment rate per capita. Nearly all eligible rural households (94%) signed up for food stamps. Furthermore, “Urban participants expressed significantly greater concerns about relying on government assistance compared to rural” SNAP beneficiaries, according to a 2024 study.
Similar trends prevail in Medicaid. With 700 rural hospitals in danger of closure, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act dedicated $50 billion to offset reductions in Medicaid’s Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments authorized by the Affordable Care Act. Thus, the government acts to stave off a problem of its own making.
Rugged, rural America’s heavy reliance on government programs stems in part from high poverty, limited career paths, and aging population. Rural counties with a poverty rate of 20% or higher represent nearly nine out of 10 high-poverty counties. Rural Americans are disproportionately represented in the military, increasing Tricare and VA usage. Although the U.S. median age creeps up every year, the more remote the area, the older its population, swelling Social Security and Medicare rolls. Still, demographics are not destiny. One-third of rural counties saw their median age decrease as their working-age population grew.
Yet as the situation seems poised to improve, the federal government has sometimes poured gasoline on the fire of rural dissolution. The tiny Cincinnati suburb of Lockland saw its population nearly double in one year after the Biden-Harris administration dumped more than 3,000 Mauritian asylum seekers in the village of 3,500. The number of meals served by the Valley Interfaith Community Resource Center exploded from 5,000 to 34,000. “A situation that wasn’t caused by this village has been dropped on us, and now we’re left to deal with it,” said Mayor Mark Mason.
Tempting as that may be, small-town America cannot blame all its problems on government inefficiency, interference, or malign neglect. To improve their economic lot, rural residents must overcome some long-ingrained habits. The labor force participation rate has always been lower in rural areas than urban areas, worse still among prime working-age males.
Longtime residents often resent when a skilled professional moves to the area, assuming an outsider took a “good job” that could have gone to a local. In hiring, family ties may overpower talent, competence, qualifications, or results. Established monopolies sometimes thwart business opportunities for “out-of-county” competitors. While covering a small-town meeting as a young journalist, a communications professional indicated that a crotchety council member “won’t vote yes on anything that doesn’t directly benefit him or his family.”
The economy produced by this arrangement creates cookie-cutter strip malls in every small-town featuring the depressing combination of a health care facility, a Dollar General, a payday lender, a tattoo parlor, and a legalized gambling outlet. Rural residents drive 14 miles more each day than their urban counterparts, often due to long commutes, at a cost of more than $1,300 a year. A 25-mile trip could easily take an hour following circuitous byways rendered impassable by anything from localized flooding to wandering livestock.
Rural America’s lower tax burdens often rest beside government dependence.
These realities have led some to revile small-town America. Kevin D. Williamson of The Dispatch dismissively branded Appalachia “The Big White Ghetto,” where the populace is “dead broke, stone-cold stupid, and high on rage.”
Others recommend the government subsidize its decimation. Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute proposed “relocation subsidies to the long-term unemployed,” provided they move “at least a two-hour drive” away.
But conservatives have always understood that rootedness and human connections act as a prime bulwark against totalitarianism. “Release man from the contexts of community and you get not freedom and rights but intolerable aloneness and subjection to demoniac fears and passions,” Robert Nisbet wrote in The Quest for Community. “Mutilate the roots of society and tradition, and the result must inevitably be the isolation of a generation from its heritage, the isolation of individuals from their fellow men, and the creation of the sprawling, faceless masses.”
In the end, properly balancing economic dynamism with community may be a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
V. Rev. Benjamin Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest with more than two decades of experience as a conservative editor, commentator, and radio talk show host. His views are his own
