In 1914, the Cooperative Extension Service was established to disseminate information about agriculture and home economics from land-grant universities to the U.S. public. At that time, about 30 percent of U.S. workers were in agriculture-related occupations; by the late 1990s, that share had declined to about 1 percent. Today, the Extension System ("Extension") is largely publicly funded and links the educational and research arms of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, land-grant universities, and related institutions. The system has changed along with its audience. The number of full-time-equivalent Extension personnel dropped by 12 percent from 1977 to 1997, with the largest declines found in community resource development and 4-H youth programs, two of the four main Extension program areas. (The other two programs are agriculture and natural resources, and home economics and human nutrition.) Regional personnel FTE allocation patterns were mostly similar to the national ones.