Category: Demographics
-
Don’t Bet the Farm on Population Projections
The Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia is the entity tasked with making official population projections for the Commonwealth of Virginia and its localities. Their projections feed into all manner of planning documents across the state. If the projections are off, so are the forecasts for school attendance and transportation demand. Getting the…
-
Charts of the Day: Job Polarization
The good news in the ongoing evolution of Virginia’s economy is that employment in high-paying occupations has increased since 2008. The bad news is that employment in low-paying occupations has risen as well while employment in middle-class occupations is shrinking. Kathryn Crespin with the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia published these charts…
-
Exploring the Dark Side of the Creative Class
Richard Florida, who gained renown 15 years ago with his book, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” is a progenitor of big ideas exploring the nexus of urbanism, innovation and prosperity, and he’s back with another book and another big idea. Having documented in previous works that a handful of “superstar cities” are sucking up…
-
Where the Millennials Are Moving
Time has produced a confusing article on how Millennials “are moving to America’s cities,” using the terms “cities,” “urban areas,” and “metropolitan areas” interchangeably. But the main thrust of the report seems clear enough: Some metros are seeing a faster increase in the Millennial population than others. Indeed, 11 metros actually lost Millennials. The reason the article caught my eye…
-
Boomergeddon Watch: Illinois and Puerto Rico
S&P Global has warned that Illinois’ debt could be downgraded to junk bond status if the state doesn’t get its fiscal affairs in order. Paralyzed by partisan gridlock, the Prairie State hasn’t had a budget in two years. Since the Great Depression, no other state has gone for more than a year without a budget,…
-
Marriage, Fertility and Male Earnings
One of the great debates in the social science of poverty asks what accounts for the decline in marriage and the increase in out-of-wedlock births. There is a broad consensus among scholars of diverse ideological persuasions that children born into stable marriages tend to fare better in life than those raised by single mothers. The question…
-
Feeling Pretty Good: C-ville and Lynchburg
When evaluating community well being, statisticians tend to focus on objective criteria such as average income, tax levels, educational achievement, life expectancy and the like. But there also are subjective criteria involving how people feel about things. Gallup Inc., the polling organization, has partnered with Healthways, a well being and wellness provider to employers, to…
-
How Virginia’s Slowing Population Growth Plays Out Locally
Speaking of slower population growth… Even though Virginia’s population growth is slowing overall, the dynamics play out differently at a local and regional level. Luke Juday, director of planning for the City of Waynesboro, has developed a useful schema for examining Virginia’s cities and counties. He has created a matrix based on two variables: whether a…
-
Graph of the Day: People Still Leaving Virginia
Virginia lost population through out-migration for the third year running in 2014-2015, according to IRS tax return data. As a consequence, the Old Dominion grew by the smallest number — 44,000 residents — since the 1970s. What little growth that did occur could be attributed to natural increase, births over deaths, write Hamilton Lombard and Kathryn Crespin…
-
A New Toy for Wonks: Interactive Death Map
Virginia has mortality rates roughly in line with the national average, although there are wide variations within the state, as can be seen in part in this image captured from the U.S. Health Map published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Not surprisingly, the highest mortality rates are found in the impoverished Southwest and…
-
What the 50 States Would Look Like If…
Here’s what the 50 states would look like if they were based upon contemporary economic realities — commuting patterns — instead of geography and history. The map is based upon research by Garrett Nelson, a historical geographer at Dartmouth College. “Why should we think that areas which were drawn up for horses and buggies still…
-
Number of High School Grads Leveling Off
Virginia should experience a surge in the number of high school graduates through 2025 before dropping off by 2030, bucking a national trend in which the number declines by 4%. The projections made by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education are designed to help state systems of higher education conduct their long-term planning. Trends…
-
Chart of the Day: Shrinking Workforce
This chart, published by Hamilton Lombard on the StatChat blog, shows how the working-age population of the United States has begun shrinking in much of the United States. While metropolitan areas still experience a growing workforce as they suck up labor from rural counties, even urban growth is slower than it was ten to fifteen years ago.…
-
Virginia Welfare Trends
I came across some interesting data on the Virginia Department of Social Services website showing the number of Virginians receiving social welfare benefits. I offer the data without commentary. — JAB
-
Virginia Needs More Vikings and Mormons
by James A. Bacon One of the most intriguing disciplines of social scientific study in the 21st century explores the social and economic dimensions of happiness. Academics routinely rank the nations of the world and, less consistently, the fifty states. Our friends at WalletHub have taken a crack at devising their own state-by-state breakdown. But…