The quality of rural housing has improved markedly since World War II; from 38 percent standard in 1950 to 67 percent in 1960 and nearly 80 percent in 1968. Rural housing has shared in the general upgrading of housing which resulted from the postwar building boom. New construction and renovation has exceeded new household formations by a wide enough margin to permit a general shifting up and abandonment or demolition of the poorest units. Rural America however, still had higher percentages of

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... bstandard housing than did urban areas in 1968: 17.1 percent of nonmetropolitan housing was substandard compared, with 5.7 percent in the central cities of the SMSA's and 4.0 percent outside the central cities of the SMSA's. The substandard rural housing is heavily concentrated in the southeastern States. The analysis emphasizes rural aspects of the private sector construction industry, mobile homes, the financing of housing, government programs, and projections.