“An influx of retirees and ethnic populations brings both challenges and benefits to small-town America” according to a feature article in the April issue of Amber Waves, from the USDA Economic Research Service.

This NCES report presents data including the number of students by grade and the number receiving special education, migrant, or English language learner services. Some tables disaggregate the student data by racial/ethnic group or community characteristics such as rural - urban. The numbers and types of teachers, other education staff, schools, and local education agencies are also reported. Finance data include revenues by source (local, state, and federal) and total and per-pupil expenditures by function.

Urban Agglomerations 2005 and Urban and Rural Areas 2005 are now available from the United Nations Population Division.

This ERS publication, from the USDA, profiles participants in the NSLP. The data was collected from the 2001 SIPP and the 1999-2002 NHANES.

This ERS publication, from the USDA, tries to determine whether some types of households are more likely than others to budget their food purchases in accordance with TFP benchmarks, and to identify households that might benefit most from nutrition education programs, the study compared actual and TFP expenditures for four household categories.

Health disparities may be more closely tied to neighborhoods and rural/urban differences than to race, according to a post on Science Blog. The post cites an article about heat wave deaths appearing in the August issue of American Sociological Review (Yahoo! news story) and an article about black mortality rates in Harlem and Pitt County, North Carolina in the August issue of Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (Health Behavior News Service story).

A report from the USDA ERS indicates that farm counts have been relatively stable since the 1970s. Exits and entries are essentially in balance.

This report, from the USDA ERS, shows a slight decline in the number of hungry people in the world from 688 million in 1992-94 to 639 million in 2002-04.

This publication, from the USDA ERS, shows national and regional trends in land use and compares earlier major land-use estimates.

World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision Population Database is now available from the United Nations Population Division. The database allows users to select and download population estimates and projections for urban and rural populations for the years 1950-2030. Publications based on these data are expected later this year.