About this project
The Rural Reconnect Initiative is a project led by The Institute for College Access & Success. The initiative explores the enabling institutional and policy conditions necessary to advance the college completion and economic mobility of rural learners with some college and no degree in the South and Southwest. This interactive map allows users to explore rural population demographic information by commuting zone, including age, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment nationally and to identify the institutions of higher education serving these commuting zones.
This map uses microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates. To estimate demographics for counties and commuting zones, we aggregate data for each Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) using the Geocorr 2022 crosswalk from the Missouri Census Data Center and the 2020 Commuting Zone and Labor Market Areas from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. Due to privacy suppression of small sample sizes, some counties or commuting zones may be missing data for some demographics.
TICAS would like to thank Andrew Hahn and Dr. Jared Colston for their partnership and contributions to the development of this interactive data tool.
