Median household incomes in rural America actually grew 3.4 percent in 2015, according to policy experts who study the census numbers very closely. The crucial figure on median household incomes in rural America isn’t even found on its official report. The wrong rural income number came from the bureau’s Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement, a reliable source of detailed information on income and poverty that economists and policy makers have relied on for decades. In 2014, the C.P.S.’s estimate of rural America was 50 million. It confirmed suspicions about a link between people’s economic anxieties in rural America and the rise of Donald J. Trump.

Source: New York Times September 16, 2016 22:41 UTC