A recent study released by the USDA Economic Research Service focused on towns that are losing population, and several in South Dakota and Nebraska were featured as towns struggling to hold residents. John Cromartie is a geographer with the USDA and co-author of the study. He traveled to remote communities lacking natural amenities and found that the largest reason for folks not returning home was the lack of career opportunities and increased salaries.
He says the talked with those who did come back home and made it work.

Cromartie says many of these folks made sacrifices for higher paying jobs to return to family and the rural lifestyle. He says that lifestyle is what has helped make folks successful in their small business ventures.

He says the people who return to their small hometowns have huge impacts on their community by adding educated skillsets to the local economy.

Returning residents are also cited as contributing largely to school systems facing consolidation through child enrollment and an emphasis on volunteerism found in many of the communities Cromartie and his team studied. He says they visited high school reunions in order to gather information from both those who came back and those who did not.