Category: Demographics
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Virginia Population: 8.3 Million and Climbing
Virginia 2013 population growth highlights fresh from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center: Current population: 8.3 million The state population grew 74,531, less than one percent and the slowest rate since before the Great Recession. Still, that rate was faster than the national average, making Virginia the 14th fastest-growing state in the country. Population…
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Housing Supply, Demand and Affordability
by James A. Bacon The Hampton Roads and Richmond housing markets are “moderately unaffordable,” according to the 10th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2014. While not exactly a kudo, that classification puts the two of Virginia’s three largest metros in the top one third of housing affordability for major markets (one million people and…
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West Virginia’s Lessons on Fracking
By Peter Galuszka Tap water is now drinkable for most of the 300,000 residents in the environs of Charleston, the capital of Virginia’s sister state to the west, but the mess has ample warnings for future problems notably fracking for natural gas. The national newspapers are filled with interesting pieces this morning about the problems…
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Where the Poor Are
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka With expanding Medicaid about to become a major issue with the incoming Terry McAuliffe administration, it is curious to see exactly where the poor people in Virginia live. An intriguing New York Times interactive graph provides clues and allows one to draw some rather disturbing conclusions. The single worst pocket of poverty…
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Are the Millennials Really Different?
by James A. Bacon One of the key questions in forecasting future trends in urban development is a demographic one: How different are the Millennials from previous generations? Sure, young people are flocking to urban centers, they’re driving less and they’re riding their bicycles more than Boomers and Generation Xers did at the same age.…
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The Laughable Fiction of Travel-Demand Forecasts
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Transportation and regional transportation planning organizations periodically make traffic forecasts for planning purposes. The idea makes sense in the abstract — estimating future volumes of traffic is needed to determine how much, and where, we should invest in new transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, the process is flawed. Estimates…
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Core Confusing Words: Rural and Metro
Some interesting data from Wendell Cox by way of the New Geography blog… We think of metropolitan areas as being urbanized, whether at inner-city densities or “suburban” (post-World War II development-pattern densities) but, in fact, they contain a lot of “rural” area. A majority of “rural” residents in the United States, observes Cox, actually reside…
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Bye, Bye, ‘Burbie
Here’s a trend that ought to set government officials in larger suburban counties across Virginia on edge. U.S. businesses, declares the Wall Street Journal, have entered a new era of “corporate urbanism.” In a reverse of the post-World War II flight from the city to the suburbs, Motorola, United Continental Holdings, Hillshire Brands and other…
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The Goody Two Shoes State?
I was raised in a family in which profanity was non-existent. The worst word I ever heard my Naval-officer father use was “crap,” and that was only once. As a Baby Boomer, I learned at school to swear some time around the 4th grade (never under-estimate the value of a private-school education), cussed like a…
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Map of the Day: Cars Per Household
What is the most car-loving location east of the Mississippi? You guessed it — this is a Virginia blog, so I wouldn’t have brought it up if the answer weren’t the Old Dominion. The Vizual Statistix blog mapped the average number of vehicles per household for each county (and in Virginia, independent city) and, not…
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What Are Those Dag Nabbed Old Folks Doing Now?
Virginia typically ranks well in lists of top states for retirees, observes Hamilton Lombard at the StatChat blog, but more 65- to 74-year-olds left the state than moved in over the past decade. As for the college towns that are reputed to be such great retirement magnets, Blacksburg and Charlottesville haven’t seen much of an…
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Pope Francis Slams “Trickle Down”
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in Abortion, Feminism, Women’s Rights, Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka In a sharp rebuke to traditional conservative economic thought, the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics says he wants the church to rethink its strategies towards addressing income inequality and poverty and shun “the idolatry of money” and “trickle down” philosophies that give the rich far too much influence. Pope Francis outlined…
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NOVA’s a Mess? Blame the CIA
By Peter Galuszka Northern Virginia, the economic engine that drives the rest of the state, has always been strongly linked to the federal government. By extension, that means tied to the Pentagon, and, as a recent book shows, the Central Intelligence Agency and today, all its antecedents. Author Andrew Friedman, a history professor at Haverford…
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Disband the ObamaCare Wrecking Crew
By Peter Galuszka As the right wing echo chamber continues to crank up after the botched launch of the Affordable Care Act, here are a couple of items that direct us back to reality. One gives us a picture of how the U.S. really compares with comparable advanced countries with universal or near-universal coverage. The…
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Why Some Health Care Plans Aren’t Worth Keeping
By Peter Galuszka You can almost hear the telexes chattering in the predawn hours sending out coded instructions to eager conservative bloggers. It’s a “red state” alert! Plan “R” for “Roger!” Just like Major General Jack D. Ripper. It’s the go code for attacking Obamacare! So, you have them excitedly dusting off their purple prose.…