Migration is and will continue to be to urban areas (more than half the world, ~4B people currently live in urban areas, as of this comment). With respect to the US rural areas, they will continue to clear out over time, which is important to consider so as to not invest in more auto centric infra that will be stranded assets (and the US already has ~$50T in existing federal debt liabilities, as of this comment).

A leading indicator in this regard, US centric, is k-12 school, college, church ["place of worship"], and hospital closures in rural areas; once anchor employers and critical infrastructure close, the population death spiral is not far behind. More US farmers being over 75 versus under 35 is a confounding factor, as most US rural areas are ag driven and supported, economically speaking.

Citations:

Our World In Data: Share of population living in urban areas, 1950 to 2025 - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-urban...

Our World In Data: Urbanization - https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization - Published September 2018, text updates made in March 2025.

Our World In Data: Share of population living in urban areas vs. GDP per capita, 2024 - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/urbanization-vs-gdp

U.S. Family Farms Face Record Aging and Rising Bankruptcies Crisis - https://www.agrolatam.com/news/u-s-family-farms-face-record-... - February 15th, 2026

Half of All US Rural Counties Are Losing Population. What Is Contributing to Those Declines? - https://dailyyonder.com/half-of-all-rural-counties-are-losin... - April 15th, 2026

Depopulation, Deaths, Diversity, and Deprivation: The 4Ds of Rural Population Change - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences January 2025, 11 (2) 88-114; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2025.11.2.05

‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/23/rural-ameri... | https://archive.today/4EtHj - June 23rd, 2024 ("81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023")

Rural America Lost Population Over the Past Decade for the First Time in History - https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... - February 22, 2022

(think in systems)