Increasing Concentration of Veterans in Rural Areas Creates Challenges for VA Subhead: Most Vets Now Settle in Only a Few States

Changing demographics for veterans in United States, with most now settling in the South and the Southwest, often in rural areas, has potentially profound implications for how and where VA offers services. It also raises questions about the future of the broad base of political support that traditionally has existed for veterans’ programs.

Those concerns were underscored by a recent study which graphically illustrates the growing divide between veterans and civilians who have never served. Research by Jay Teachman, PhD, of Western Washington University indicates that, as the total number of veterans in the United States declined over the past three decades, the veteran population increasingly concentrated in rural counties.1

According to the study published in Armed Forces & Society, veterans tended to gravitate to rural areas with large military installations in states such as Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.

Two factors primarily drive this migration, Teachman told U.S. Medicine.