Even though cities are considered centers of modern political, cultural, and social life, many people still live in rural areas. According to The World Bank (no date) information, the percentage of the rural population keeps declining with every passing year. In particular, this value decreased from over 66% in 1960 to slightly more than 43% in 2020 (The World Bank, no date). As the United Nations (2018, para. 7) explains, “the global rural population is now close to 3.4 billion and is expected to rise slightly and then decline to 3.1 billion by 2050.” This information means that many people live in the country worldwide.
The percentage of the rural population is lower for developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. For example, the US Department of Agriculture (2021, para. 5) admits that 46 million US citizens lived in rural areas in 2017, which is slightly more than approximately 15% of the country’s total population. Simultaneously, 9.7 million people (close to 17% of the state’s population) live in rural regions in the United Kingdom (Department for Environment, Food, & Rural Affairs, 2021, para. 7). This information demonstrates that many people live in the village, meaning that they represent a significant research object.
Research Objective and Questions
The given proposal focuses on the issue that rural areas are insufficiently developed. Abreu and Mesias (2020, p. 578), as well as Veronika and Mónika (2020, p. 530), highlight the countryside’s more mediocre financial state. Simultaneously, Lowe et al. (2019, p. 30) and Mukti et al. (2021, p. 1) comment on inefficiencies in the development of knowledge and expertise in rural regions. Thus, the objective of the proposal is to determine how the inhabitants of the country in the United Kingdom assess rural development from an economic point of view.
The research project is going to answer a few essential questions that are presented below:
- Do rural people positively or negatively assess the level of rural development?
- What are characteristic features of economic inequality present in the country?
- How many rural people suffer from poverty?
- What are the respondents’ suggestions on how to improve the financial situation in the rural areas?
Theoretical Framework
To begin with, one should clarify the meaning of the word rural in the proposal. The definition offered by the US Department of Agriculture is used for that purpose. According to it, the word represents nonmetropolitan counties, including areas with a population of 10,000-49,999 persons and smaller counties (US Department of Agriculture, 2019, para. 9-10). According to GOV.UK (2021, para. 1), areas are rural if they “fall outside of settlements with more than 10,000 resident population.” The latter definition will be used because it represents the British context.
The proposal relies on the Cumulative Advantage Theory to answer the research questions. According to Bohmert and DeMaris (2018, p. 1034), this theory “posits that individuals’ lives are shaped by decisions and events that are both positive (advantages) and negative (disadvantages).” In other words, this framework denotes that every additional challenge significantly aggravates the quality of life. The model has already been successfully applied to various fields, including economics, sociology, biology, demography, and others (Easton and Kong, 2021, p. 2089; Ross-Hellauer et al., 2022, p. 1). Furthermore, Ozga et al. (2021, p. 429) and Gutenstein and Kiuru (2018, p. 81) demonstrate that the model can be used to research rural populations. That is why it is reasonable to believe that the Cumulative Advantage Theory is suitable for the proposal.
Literature Review
Many researchers focus on rural regions to conduct their studies. For example, some scientists admit that nonmetropolitan areas are “a complex web of social, political, and historical factors” (Sisto, Lopolito and Van Vliet, 2018, p. 442). Various business strategies and decisions can affect agricultural landscape sustainability (Swaffield et al., 2019, p. 1357; Nowak and Grunewald, 2018, p. 12; Eichler Inwood et al., 2018, p. 299). The 4th Industrial Revolution is expected to bring positive outcomes to both cities and nonmetropolitan regions (Cowie, Townsend and Salemink, 2020, p. 169; Philbeck and Davis, 2018, p. 17). This information demonstrates that the countryside is a popular research object.
Some scientific evidence demonstrates that the rural environment provides the inhabitants with versatile benefits. Rural areas offer a suitable and productive environment to open small businesses (Sycheva et al., 2018, p. 292; Kimbal, 2021, p. 140; Shojaeifard, 2020, p. 185). Decentralization can result in significant benefits in terms of rural development (Mazur and Tomashuk, 2019, p. 67). A shift to locally based tourism can offer many economic benefits to rural areas (Salvatore, Chiodo and Fantini, 2018, p. 49; Liasidou et al., 2021, p. 731). Roman et al. (2020, p. 1) support this claim and state that rural regions can be attractive for tourists, which can lead to economic development. Furthermore, the Internet of Things allows nonmetropolitan regions to develop smart precision agriculture and highly efficient farming and housing techniques (Ahmed, De and Hussain, 2018, p. 4890; Yang, Liu and Tian, 2021). Finally, nonmetropolitan areas can be a source of renewable energy after placing photovoltaic power plants and wind farms in the region, which can improve the village’s economy (Poggi, Firmino and Amado, 2018, p. 630). According to this information, rural regions can be a source of economic advantages.
In addition to that, the environment under analysis offers many challenges. Thus, nonmetropolitan areas experience many challenges, including decreasing population, demographic aging, and poverty (Melece, Kogut and Shena, 2020, p. 1877; Martínez-Abraín et al., 2020, p. 108860; Navarro Valverde, 2019, p. 223). The rural decline is an inevitable phenomenon because people typically strive to become a part of the urban-industrial economy (Li, Westlund and Liu, 2019, p. 135). The COVID-19 pandemic also brought significant challenges to nonmetropolitan areas, meaning that the healthcare system should not underestimate the needs of their population (Ranscombe, 2020, p. 545; Ogunkola et al., 2020, p. 1302). Population’s average age is higher in rural areas, meaning that their inhabitants are subject to significant health risks because of COVID-19 (Henning-Smith, 2020, p. 396). Rural areas suffer from ineffective waste management strategies that adversely affect the environment and living conditions (Han et al., 2018, p. 45; Mihai and Ingrao, 2018, p. 1631). Consequently, it is necessary to consider all these issues when commenting on the economic advantages of the countryside.
Sufficient evidence was also collected to define the economic development of nonmetropolitan regions across the globe. Rural areas’ development depends on the availability of natural resources, while inhabitants typically face low income, unemployment, and low quality of social services in Malaysia (Edirn, 2018, p. 1). It is possible to use various methods, including mapping, SWOT analysis, mathematical statistics, and others, to plan the economic development of rural regions (Ismailova et al., 2020, p. 410). Furthermore, China’s agricultural sector showed a reduction of labor force accompanied by economic growth (Ma et al., 2019, p. 163). In Poland, rural areas are subject to socio-economic inefficiencies, meaning that these regions face deteriorated living conditions compared to cities (Dudek and Wrzochalska, 2019, p. 299). In India, the construction of a new road connecting remote areas with metropolitan areas resulted in the increased movement of workers out of agriculture (Asher and Novosad, 2020, p. 797). These findings reveal how different nations approach the issue of rural economic development.
In addition to that, it is rational to identify how it is possible to promote the growth mentioned above. Entrepreneurship programs are essential for rural territories because these interventions help people create and validate businesses (Galvão et al., 2020, p. 314; Muñoz and Kimmitt, 2019, p. 851). Bank loans and leasing are the most promising sources of investment to bring technology innovation to rural areas, i.e., to use automated vehicles to test pastures (Gaukhar, Bektanov and Bekturganova, 2019, p. 935). Since many governments and specialized agencies focus on developing rural regions, they should not ignore the necessity to preserve nature and contribute to a sustainable environment (de Castro-Pardo, Azevedo and Fernández, 2021, p. 1008; Dunets et al., 2019, p. 1217). Various nations have specific approaches to promote rural development.
One should also determine how inequality is presented in the countryside. In Vietnam, people who live in areas with higher economic inequality report being less happy and satisfied with their lives (Tran, Nguyen and Van Vu, 2018, p. 781). Rural areas are characterized by fewer employment and consumption opportunities, meaning that inhabitants of these regions face many kinds of economic and social inequality (Camarero and Oliva, 2019, p. 2; Pkhakadze, 2021, p. 689). Unequal access to resources in rural areas results in the fact that people can witness social marginalization or even exclusion (Papadopoulos et al., 2019, p. 474; Walsh, O’Shea and Scharf, 2020, p. 2311). Fewer economic resources denote that inhabitants of rural areas in the United States are more likely to have compromised health outcomes (Abedi et al., 2021, p. 740). In France, economic inequality in rural areas is significant, which gave rise to the Yellow Vest movement (Jetten, Mols and Selvanathan, 2020, p. 1). Various world countries suffer from considerable inequality in the village.
Poverty is another issue that can affect the inhabitants of rural regions. In nonmetropolitan areas, poverty is a frequent phenomenon that emerges as a result of multiple social and environmental factors (Haider et al., 2018, p. 311). Rural poverty is a topical issue because the volume of degrading agricultural lands that reflect challenging economic conditions of the village keeps increasing in Europe, Central Asia, and North America (Barbier and Hochard, 2018, p. 625). China is an example of how a country can significantly reduce the volume of poverty in rural areas thanks to industrial and economic development on the national level (Ren et al., 2018, p. 1427). In Africa, the movement of people out of agriculture does not result in massive industrialization, which means that many people in rural and urban areas still suffer from poverty (Thurlow, Dorosh and Davis, 2019, p. 31). Consequently, governments should take specific measures to minimize poverty in rural regions.
Finally, it is reasonable to identify the literature that describes the economic state of rural regions in the UK. Inhabitants of rural areas are given greater access to hip replacement surgery compared to their needs (Ryan-Ndegwa, Zamani and Akrami, 2021, p. 1). In the UK, a current trend indicates that many investors use rural lands for non-agricultural purposes, including wine production, golf field, and others (Livingstone et al., 2021, p. 1153). Evidence from the UK also demonstrates that inhabitants of urban areas typically report lower levels of satisfaction compared to representatives of rural regions (Hoogerbrugge and Burger, 2021, p. 1). The countryside in the UK is witnessing a stable influx of migrants, who consider the rural environment idyll and problem-free (MacKrell and Pemberton, 2018, p. 49). This evidence reveals that people in the countryside have attractive living conditions.
However, not all the researchers agree that the UK rural regions are problem-free. People living in rural areas often suffer from social and neighborhood exclusion (Dahlberg and McKee, 2018, p. 176). Inequality in British society became the most evident in the late 20th century, and it remained topical in the early 21st century (Sowels, 2021, p. 149). In 2018, an absolute poverty rate across the UK population was over 10% (Sowels, 2021, p. 153). A study by Longhurst and Hargreaves (2019, p. 2) demonstrates that many people in the UK suffer from energy vulnerability, meaning that many individuals face eat-or-heat dilemmas. According to Witteveen (2020, p. 100551), the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in economic challenges for lower-earning groups, while white males were more likely to be dismissed. These findings reveal that the overall economic climate in the UK is not ideal, meaning that it is reasonable to identify how people from the countryside report their financial conditions.
Planned Methodology
The given proposal is going to rely on qualitative methodology. According to Rahman (2020, p. 103), research is qualitative when its findings are obtained without using statistical procedures or any other means of quantification. According to Noyes et al. (2019, p. 526), qualitative analysis can effectively work with large volumes of data and provide good results. Furthermore, this methodology includes many kinds of works, and suitable examples are discourse analysis, case study, various interviews, and many others (Mohajan, 2018, p. 24). Qualitative research generates more reliable findings if an appropriate theoretical framework supports it (Collins and Stockton, 2018, p. 1). This information demonstrates that qualitative methodology is suitable to address the research questions.
In addition to that, it is worth admitting that the proposal will rely on structured interviewees to collect data. Hawkins (2018, p. 493) stipulates that this instrument is among the most popular methods of data collection in qualitative research. Today, scientists tend to rely on online interviews because this approach is more convenient and less energy and time consuming (Stephens et al., 2021, p. 2896). This step will allow for contacting the representatives of the rural population and receiving information from them. However, the dissertation will further apply thematic analysis to work with the data and uncover meanings from the responses (Kiger & Varpio, 2020, p. 846). This instrument will help identify what leading themes the interviewees discovered.
The dissertation will not need many resources to answer the research questions. In addition to the literature review, the work will rely on primary data obtained through the interviewees. This approach will add to the dissertation’s originality and scientific value. It is estimated that 6-8 months will be necessary to conduct the dissertation. This timeframe includes all the steps that are finding the respondents, interviewing them, analyzing the data, and writing the work.
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