Statistically speaking, big cities and rural places have a lot more in common than we commonly believe.

In the popular stereotype since the 2016 election, America is divided into two unappealing halves: irate, disenfranchised, often poor rural dwellers versus smug, satisfied and woefully obtuse urban elites—the latter joined in 2018 by suburbanites. The voting map illustrates this narrative: skinny coastal arms of blue, likely holding oat-milk lattes, alongside a giant, angry sea of red. This story of division may be unsettling, but it isn’t true. Using the American Community Survey’s five-year data estimates, I studied socioeconomic and demographic data for 16,732 census-designated places, ranging from major cities like New York City and San Francisco to rural communities with fewer than 5,000 people like Danville, Pa., where I grew up.

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We have created a false dichotomy between urban and rural America by cherry-picking places like San Francisco and New York and pitting them against equally specific examples of rural America, like Appalachian Kentucky. We have painted a portrait of an out-of-touch elite vs. an angry populist movement. But both are tiny minorities of the population. Most Americans aren’t in the top 1% and don’t attend Pilates classes or read the New Yorker. But neither are the lives of most rural Americans captured in the pages of “Hillbilly Elegy,” nor are they angry and resentful of globalization and Manhattanites. Extreme poverty and chronic unemployment exist in rural America. But these problems exist in the cities, too—evidence of a class divide that cuts across geography and demographics.

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