Category: Demographics
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Politics, Virginia Style
by Bill Bolling It has been said that if you love politics, Virgina is a great place to be because there is an election every year! This year, 2023, will be no exception with all 140 seats in the Virginia General Assembly up for grabs. But 2023 will not be your typical General Assembly election…
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Red States Have Significantly Higher Percentages of Minors than Blue States
by James C. Sherlock The Census Bureau yesterday released part of its 2022 population estimates. It showed marked differences in the percentages of children and adolescents under 18 among the states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Adults in red states are raising more children on average than those in blue states. And it…
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Now It’s a Party: Local Elections May Be Decided in June for a While
by Joe Fitzgerald It looks like 12 percent of people voting in Harrisonburg’s Nov. 8 City Council election cast a vote for only one of the four candidates instead of the two they could have voted for. But that number needs more asterisks on it than a home run record. Single-shot votes are difficult to…
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Data of the Day: Lusting for Luxury Lifestyles
Virginia scores 8th nationally in the frequency of Google searches for “luxury,” “luxury cars,” “Luxury goods,” “luxury travel,” and “luxury apartments,” according to Chrono24, the maker of luxury watches. The fascination with luxury goods appears to be mainly an East Coast phenomenon, with New York topping the list. Lest you think that the metric of…
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Parents Taking Their Children Out of Poor Performing Virginia Public Schools by the Tens of Thousands
by James C. Sherlock Would you send your kid to this school? No? Someone else’s kid is attending it — or skipping school. Virginia public sch0ols lost 4% of their fall student memberships, a total of 46,165 students, between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2021, while their budgets from the state went…
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North of the James: Fastest Growing Housing Prices on the East Coast
by James A. Bacon Ever since the late 1930s Virginia’s population has grown faster than that of the nation — until the past few years, that is. Recently, Virginia has experienced a slight net out-migration of domestic residents, and population growth has slowed to match that of the U.S. as a whole. Writing in the…
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Virginia Needs Better Information Sharing to Provide Mandated Public Services to Illegals Efficiently and Effectively
by James C. Sherlock I am on record as a persistent advocate of improving the quality of both schools and medical services for poor and minority citizens. It has been the main focus of my work for years. In a directly related matter, we read, with different reactions depending upon our politics, of the struggles…
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Hospitals Continue to Cut Labor and Delivery and NICU Services
by James C. Sherlock Virginia and the nation continue to see the results of the baby bust. I wrote yesterday of the baby cliff, the 15% decline in live births that started in the great recession of 2007-09. It continues. And it continues to drive change, much of it not good. I have written here…
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Planning for Telecommuting’s Effects on Virginia
By James C. Sherlock I think that we don’t yet realize the full impact of the revolution being wrought by the telecommuting that accelerated during COVID. I am sure I don’t. But Virginians, and our state and local governments, must try to figure it out. We are moving towards a world in which white collar…
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From Fewer Births to Fewer School Kids
The number of births in Virginia has been declining for years, not just in rural counties with shrinking populations, but across the state. Indeed, since 2016 the fall-off in births has been sharpest in Northern Virginia, according to data published StatChat, the University of Virginia’s demographic research group blog. Birth rates are declining in all…
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How’d Virginia Do in “The Great Pandemic Migration?”
Glenn Youngkin was right. Yes, Virginia, we have a problem. by Chris Saxman Most mornings start with brewing a large pot of coffee, letting the dogs out into the fenced in backyard, and waiting for the papers to be delivered. Usually I can skim through the local old soldier, the Richmond Times Dispatch, before the…
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Virginia Migration Trends
by James A. Bacon Over the decade between 2010 and 2020, Virginia lost more than 80,000 inhabitants through domestic out-migration (a figure that captures the number of people moving across state lines within the United States). But it more than offset that loss through an international in-migration of roughly 300,000, according to data published in…
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Virginia’s Changing Public School Demographics – COVID Edition
by James C. Sherlock Virginia’s public schools underwent significant changes in enrollment between 2018-19 and 2020-21. The figures for this school year have yet to be released. In the three-year period ending 2020-21, Virginia public schools saw a decline of 37,775 students, a loss of 2.9%. The racial and social-economic demographics also changed. The numbers…
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Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI+) Pilot – Hidden Data, Disappearing Value — Thanks for Nothing
by James C. Sherlock This is a follow-up to my Monday report on VPI+, a federally funded four-year pilot program to assess the value of the Virginia Preschool Initiative. Today we will discuss what was not reported to the public. We will also assess the dreadful results of the pilot participants after those kids graduated…