Current U.S. settlement patterns have begun to exhibit a significant shift away from very large metropolitan centers toward more thinly settled peripheral areas. This new trend has been the subject of many recent studies which have considered data on the county level but have been unable to detect population movement within counties and among…

Using multiple regression analysis for each county and a case study of selected services in Johnson County, Iowa, the study estimated the impacts of rural non-farm development in Iowa on the demand for local public services, on the cost of providing these services, and on the distribution of service benefits and tax burdens among population…