This page contains a number of statistics on rural and urban areas for different subject areas. They are grouped under the heading ‘living in rural areas’ because they cover issues that relate to rural people and communities.  By looking at these statistics it is possible to see where rural areas are, on average, experiencing relatively positive outcomes compared to urban areas or the national average. It is also possible to see where there are challenges or risks to rural areas.

Where possible, statistics are presented over several years. This shows the trends and changes over time as well as the relative positive of rural and urban areas to each-other. In some cases it has not been possible to provide a long term time-series due to issues of data availability.