Population loss and economic decline may be the most visible signs of deterioration across rural Georgia, but hovering behind those two is another troubling measure that will complicate any efforts at revitalization: education.
Generally, rural education metrics have long lagged those in urban and suburban areas, but the widening chasm between the sprawling metropolitan Atlanta region and the rest of the state – including many regional hub cities – is now such that it’s difficult to see a path to progress, let alone prosperity, in much of rural Georgia.
One example: Based on an analysis of the latest educational attainment data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the 29-county Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) would, were it a standalone state, rank 10th nationally for educational attainment. Georgia’s remaining 130 counties would rank next-to-last nationally, ahead of West Virginia but behind Mississippi.
This contrast in educational attainment is matched almost perfectly by the one in economic productivity. With just over 58% of the state’s population, the Atlanta MSA is home to 70% of the state’s college graduates and produced 71% of its $678.1 billion gross domestic product (GDP). In addition to the ACS data, that’s based on 2023 population estimates from the Census Bureau and 2023 GDP estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Slice that same data for population and geography, and the importance of size and location snap into focus. Some 62 rural counties – those with populations below 35,000 – in the southern half of the state fell into the bottom national quartile for educational attainment, based on the 2019-2023 ACS data. Only two made it into the top national quartile: Chattahoochee County, the site of the U.S. Army’s Fort Benning, and Lee County, the affluent white flight county north of Albany and Dougherty County in southwest Georgia.
Another example: college enrollment. If current trends and patterns are any indication, the gap between the Atlanta MSA and the rest of the state is only likely to widen in the years to come. Based on fall 2024 enrollment data for the University System of Georgia (USG), nearly 80% of the in-state students attending Georgia’s top-level research institutions – Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and Augusta University – hail from the Atlanta MSA, which is, again, home to 58% of the state’s population.
As reported in the last installment of this series, 104 counties – and 3.3 million residents – fell into the bottom national quartile for per capita income (PCI) performance. Only Texas, with triple Georgia’s population, had more of its residents consigned to bottom-quartile counties.
The picture for educational attainment is much the same, as these two maps illustrate. Some 81 Georgia counties are in the bottom national quartile for educational attainment, based on an analysis of the ACS data for the period 2019-2023. That’s more than any state except Texas, and only Texas and California, with populations three and four times the size of Georgia, respectively, had more of their residents mired in bottom quartile counties for educational attainment.
Like personal income, the state’s education muscle is now concentrated primarily in the Atlanta region. Ten of the state’s top-quartile counties for educational attainment are in the Atlanta MSA’s 29 counties, which are home to a million more college graduates than the other 130 counties combined. As this table shows, the Atlanta MSA is also home to nearly four times as many students enrolled at top-tier USG universities as the rest of the state.
| Total Adult Population | # High School Dropouts | # College Graduates | Per Capita Income | GDP Per Capita | # Students Enrolled at USG Research Institution | |
| Atlanta MSA | 4,223,472 | 397,979 | 1,740,596 | $67,952 | $74,848 | 77,548 |
| All Other Georgia MSAs Combined | 3,029,588 | 403,345 | 740,311 | $48,614 | $42,830 | 20,855 |
Moreover, it’s not just rural counties whose educational attainment muscle is atrophying. Important hub cities across the state have also been losing ground to the ever-expanding Atlanta area.
In 1970, for instance, nearly every major second-tier population center boasted educational attainment measures that were reasonably comparable to major counties in Metro Atlanta. But they have all dropped in rank since then, most of them significantly. Dougherty County, whose county seat of Albany was once the center of commerce and political power in Southwest Georgia, had the ninth-best educational attainment statistics in the state in 1970; based on the 2019-2023 data from the American Community Survey, it now ranks 47th.
Other major communities have taken comparable drops: Macon-Bibb County, from 14th place in 1970 to 42nd now; Augusta-Richmond County, from 8th to 43rd; Columbus-Muscogee, from 7th to 28th; Floyd County (Rome), from 23rd to 55th, and Lowndes (Valdosta), from 13th to 33rd. Athens-Clarke County and Chatham County (Savannah) took lesser dips – from 2nd to 6th and 11th to 13th, respectively.
One key takeaway from this data is that the geographic polarization of educational attainment isn’t just a classroom issue—it shapes the future of rural Georgia. High-achieving counties draw talent, capital, and industry. Rural counties, by contrast, see their young adults leave for opportunity elsewhere and face severe challenges in workforce development, business recruitment, and quality of life. The data paints rural Georgia not only as economically at risk, but also in the grip of a self-reinforcing cycle that further depresses educational and economic prospects.
Methodology: Understanding the Trouble in God’s Country Educational Attainment Index
The TIGC EA Index provides a useful way to compare counties nationwide for educational attainment. The index is calculated using the most recent American Community Survey data (2019-2023), which provides estimates of the number of adults in 3,143 counties across the country who never finished high school; finished high school but went no further; earned some college or technical education beyond high school; and earned four-year college degrees or better. For each county, the percentage of adults who failed to finish high school are valued at a minus one (-1); high school graduates with no further education at a plus-one (+1); those with some college or technical education at a plus-two (+2), and four-year degree holders or better count at a plus three (+3). This formula aggregates the full spectrum of adult educational outcomes and produces a single score, making apples-to-apples comparisons across counties and states possible.
Here’s the equation:
((Pct HS Dropout*-1)+(Pct HS Only*+1)+(Pct Some College*2)+(Pct 4-Yr Degree*3)) = EA Index
As examples, Georgia’s top and bottom counties for educational attainment are Oconee County and Hancock County. Here are the key numbers, calculated EA Indexes, and national ranks for each county:
| Oconee County, GA | Hancock County, GA | |
| # Adults w/ less than HS diploma | 1,048 | 1,722 |
| # Adults w/ HS diploma only | 4,421 | 2,598 |
| # Adults w/ Some College | 7,102 | 1,727 |
| # Adults w/ bachelor’s degree or higher | 15,278 | 562 |
| Total Adult Population | 27,849 | 6,599 |
| TIGC EA Index | 227.70 | 90.71 |
| National Rank | 32 | 3,114 |
For this analysis, educational attainment indexes were calculated for all 3,143 U.S. counties for which the American Community Survey published data in its 2019-2023 report. The counties were then ranked nationally and cut into national quartiles, and the Georgia counties were extracted for further analysis.
Charles Hayslett is the author of the long-running Trouble in God’s Country blog, which focuses largely on the costs and consequences of the death of rural Georgia.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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