The geographic component of U.S. nonmetropolitan population change

"The decade of the 1970s witnessed two new trends of major significance in U.S. population distribution, the concentration of 85 to 90 percent of the nation's population growth in the South and West, and the revival of growth in many nonmetropolitan parts of the country....However, the nonmetropolitan resurgence has relaxed somewhat in the 1980s. From 1980 to mid-1986, nonmetropolitan territory...had only a 4 percent growth in population compared with 6.4 percent for the nation as a whole and 7.2 percent for metropolitan territory. During the 1970s the same geographic areas had increases of 14.4, 11.4, and 10.5 percent respectively."