Table 1.8. Number and percentage distribution of public elementary and secondary students, by percentage of students in school eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and locale: 2003

Status of Education in Rural America

NCES 2007-040
June 2007

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Table 1.8.

Number and percentage distribution of public elementary and secondary students, by percentage of students in school eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and locale: 2003–04

Locale	Number and percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch	10 percent or less	11–25 percent	26–50 percent	51–75 percent	More than 75 percent
		Number
Total	43,126,448	6,449,924	8,862,597	12,557,762	8,769,074	6,487,091
City	12,809,572	1,095,406	1,691,884	3,162,898	3,136,954	3,722,430
Suburban	15,549,796	3,946,797	4,026,236	3,883,089	2,259,610	1,434,064
Town	5,627,799	336,839	1,082,265	2,202,499	1,417,805	588,391
Rural	9,139,281	1,070,882	2,062,212	3,309,276	1,954,705	742,206
Fringe	4,748,997	900,458	1,262,186	1,494,091	802,882	289,380
Distant	2,973,841	147,550	667,832	1,195,216	698,936	264,307
Remote	1,416,443	22,874	132,194	619,969	452,887	188,519
		Percentage distribution
Total	40.7	15.0	20.6	29.1	20.3	15.0
City	52.9	8.6	13.2	24.7	24.5	29.1
Suburban	31.4	25.4	25.9	25.0	14.5	9.2
Town	42.9	6.0	19.2	39.1	25.2	10.5
Rural	37.9	11.7	22.6	36.2	21.4	8.1
Fringe	32.5	19.0	26.6	31.5	16.9	6.1
Distant	41.1	5.0	22.5	40.2	23.5	8.9
Remote	49.6	1.6	9.3	43.8	32.0	13.3
NOTE: The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program. To be eligible, a student must be from a household with an income at or below 130 percent of the poverty threshold for free lunch or between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty threshold for reduced-price lunch. Approximately 13,704 schools did not report information on the number of students eligible for a free or reduced-price school lunch. Therefore, this information is missing for 5,227,075 students. For a comparison of poverty definitions, see appendix B. Rural areas are located outside any urbanized area or urban cluster. Urbanized areas are densely settled areas containing at least 50,000 people. Urban clusters are densely settled areas with a population of 2,500 to 49,999. Fringe rural areas are 5 miles or less from an urbanized area or 2.5 miles or less from an urban cluster. Distant rural areas are more than 5 miles but less than or equal to 25 miles from an urbanized area, or more than 2.5 miles but less than or equal to 10 miles from an urban cluster. Remote rural areas are more than 25 miles from an urbanized area and more than 10 miles from an urban cluster. For more details on Census-defined areas, see http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/ua_2k.html. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey," 2003–04.