Posted on 01/03/2007 1:13:42 AM PST by MinorityRepublican
PROVIDENCE — The decline in Rhode Island’s population for the third straight year, as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau, is being driven by the migration of young, college-educated people looking for better job opportunities in other states, according to experts.
Losing these skilled people is an alarming trend, says University of Rhode Island economist Leonard Lardaro. He warns that a lack of educated people of working age makes it more difficult to attract high-tech companies, and their jobs, to Rhode Island.
In a year in which the U.S. population topped 300 million for the first time, Rhode Island was one of just four states to see its population decrease in the Census Bureau’s annual estimates. From a recent high estimate of 1,078,930 in 2004, the state’s population had fallen to 1,067,610 last year, according to estimates. From the 2005 estimate of 1,073,579, the state lost nearly 6,000 residents.
The most recent estimate is still above the 2000 U.S. Census count of 1,048,319 Rhode Islanders.
The other states to lose population last year were Michigan, which lost 5,190 people from a population of more than 10 million; New York, which shed 9,538 from a population of more than 19 million; and Louisiana, still recovering from the havoc caused by Hurricane Katrina, which lost 219,563 from a population of some 4.5 million, according to estimates.
The Rhode Island loss cannot be blamed on the state’s parents, who are making babies right on pace. Since 2000, the number of births and deaths in Rhode Island has been consistent, according to numbers provided by the Census Bureau. Over the past six years, Rhode Island averaged 12,670 births and 9,719 deaths per year. The year-to-year numbers keep remarkably close to those averages.
The net number of immigrants moving here from other countries has also been steady, averaging the addition of 3,656 people per year since 2000.
That leaves domestic migration — people pulling up their Rhode Island roots and moving to other states — as the culprit behind Rhode Island’s dwindling population estimates. After gaining small numbers of people from other states from 2001 to 2003, Rhode Island began losing the battle in 2004, with an estimated net loss of 2,114 people. In 2005, the estimate was a net loss of 11,618, and last year a net loss of 12,566.
While Rhode Island has for decades lost retired people to warmer climates, “The most recent group that has been leaving is the young, college-educated adults, seeking better opportunities and seeking more affordable housing,” said Mark Brown, principal planner in the Office of Statewide Planning, under the Department of Administration.
RHODE ISLAND’S population loss fits with regional trends; the Northeast is the slowest-growing region of the country, with an overall population increase last year of about 0.1 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates. For comparison, the Midwest grew at 0.4 percent, the South at 1.4 percent, and the West, 1.5 percent.
Richard Alba, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University at Albany, said the problem stems from the combination of many good Northeast colleges that produce skilled graduates and a sluggish job market that leaves them few places to work.
“We have a rather highly educated group of young people, and we don’t really have the jobs for these highly educated people, so they go to other states,” said Alba. “There’s a lack of job growth and lack of opportunity for young people that’s commensurate with their educations.”
For those young graduates, said Lardaro, “if you don’t get a job offer for $35,000 or more, you live with mom and dad, or you leave. There’s a fair amount of jobs for people right out of college that don’t pay that. Rhode Islanders who don’t want to live with mom and dad, and don’t have the [high-paying] offer, leave. Some may come back someday, but we don’t know. So there’s a skill drain, and that has the unfortunate consequence of making it even more difficult to amass a critical mass in high-tech.”
Lardaro also explained the population trends as “the downside of the housing boom.”
People who own homes have lots of home equity to finance a job search. “It basically allows some people to sell their homes, make a lot of profit and then move to a part of the country with much better job growth, buy a really nice house and have money left over to subsidize a job search. We lost a fair amount of skilled people, and that’s difficult to make up. So that’s really the downside of the housing boom.”
Brown noted that in two of the fastest growing states, Arizona and Texas, “they are building these walled out communities faster than you can sneeze. The prices are very reasonable. Down in Texas you can get a three-bedroom home for $125,000. That’s amazing. Utility bills are going to be a little bit less. Taxes, interestingly enough, in some of those areas, are higher than we have here. [People leaving Rhode Island] will pay more in property taxes, but I think they pretty much accept that because most of them will be able to purchase a home that they can’t here now.”
To slow the domestic migration of educated workers, “you better have good job growth, and we don’t,” said Lardaro. “No one is going to accuse Rhode Island of being a job-creation machine. This is not our decade. New England is kind of sitting this decade out. As a group we led in the ’80s, , we led in the ’90s, we’re being left behind in the ’00s.”
IN THE 1980S, the regional economy benefited from construction and corporate activity, he said. “In the ’80s in Rhode Island, we had real, meaningful and substantial job creation. We’ll probably never see that again. In the ’90s, , we had a fair amount of job creation in business services, retailing and tourism.… In this decade we’re adding jobs, no doubt about that, but we’re also losing a fair amount. So they are largely canceling out, so the net change has been very small. Last month it was zero.”
Governor Carcieri, soon to be sworn in for his second term, urged caution with the census numbers and defended the performance of the state’s job market during his first term.
“Considering that Rhode Island is one of the most densely populated states, ours will never be a state that experiences high population growth,” said Carcieri’s spokesman, Michael Maynard, in a statement. “But I think you also have to question these figures, which are census estimates and involve sampling. With that said, Rhode Island’s job growth has actually outperformed the other states in the region over the past five years. Since Governor Carcieri took office, Rhode Island has grown jobs at twice the rate of the other New England states and is second only to New Hampshire in the percentage of jobs gained.”
The governor believes that Rhode Island’s “high tax burden can be a disincentive to live and work here,” said Maynard. He touted “the beginning of major reforms in our tax structure” in the last state budget, such as “increasing the phase-out of the car tax, increasing property tax rebates for our most vulnerable citizens, reducing the capital gains tax and creating a flat-tax alternative.”
Alba agrees that part of the solution would be reducing the cost of living, which is a combination of many factors, including the tax burden. “But the primary solution is to have a more robustly growing economy.”
Lardaro sees the need for drastic steps. “With our budget deficits, the fact that our population is declining and the fact that we know our tax and cost structure is not competitive, Rhode Island needs to reinvent itself. This is not the time for piecemeal answers.”
"It appears, at least as inferred in the article, that Rhode Island is a high-cost state with little to offer."
In defense of RI..The beaches are great. The restaurants are some of the best in the country. Federal Hill is a little slice of Italy that is well worth the visit and the bakeries are the best in the world. I have to send pastry to my children who unfortunately had to moved to Tx and Hawaii for better jobs. My son tried to stay in the NE area and took a job in Conn. He loved it there but the cost of living was killing him. He sold his cape in Conn and bought a mansion in Texas. I have 4 children and 3 have moved out of state.
I left 20 years ago. With only a couple of exceptions, my friends with educations and ambition left, and the rest remained.
Job creation in RI in the 1980s and 1990s? I'm not sure where that took place, but I never found a decent professional gig there, and it wasn't from lack of trying.
There is one statistic out there that shows California losing something 2 million Middle Class over the past 5 years. Most have gone to Nevada and Arizona.
Anyone with even minimal ambition would flee - which is exactly what seems to be happening.
Quoting Louis Grizzard: "Welcome South, brother. Eat our food, marry our women -- we just don't care how ya did it up North".
Yep, and it seems like they are all coming to Pennsylvania, where they are really screwing the Commonwealth up even more than it already was.
Note that the article dwelled on the cost of housing, but discussed the tax situation only as an afterthought. Typical socialist bias. They fail to note that places like northern Virginia, which has stratospheric home prices, are also growing like mad.
It's all about the taxes and the lack of opportunity that high taxes cause. The RI "solution" is going to be predictable; give tax cuts to large companies who promise to move to RI. Well, they'll move there for awhile....until some other state offers them a better deal.
If you have the chance, compare population trends for the lowest tax states in the U.S. You'll note that most are growing their populations at a rate that exceeds the national average.
Your post sounds sooooo familiar. I was transferred to RI in '81, bought a house in Portsmouth (probably the only semblance of reput politics was Aquidneck Island). I always said the RI dims were socialist and repubs were liberal dims. I will never forget right after we moved the TV station was holding a job fair - it was in the middle of the recession - the TV station aired interviews with various people looking for work. When asked what qualifications they had, almost invariably the response was what a good supervisor they would make.
Property taxes (and other taxes) is exactly what drove me out when I retired. As for businesses; they are not going to pay the high cost of doing business with all the state social crap just to open an office there.
It is sad, it was a beautiful place to live and I loved it. I just couldn't afford it for retirement. When my wife retired in '02 I sold out and left. I now have a 4 B/R home on 2 acres in a little corner of VA and pay $782 a year in property taxes.
When Regan tried to base one of the Battleship divisions in Newport, guess who let the fight against it? A retired Admiral. He didn't want drunken sailors (his words) running around the streets and most definitely Bellevue Ave.
OB
I left MA for Georgia. I hated the MA politicians and the Boston Fish wrap.
We need to place a surtax on liberals, so that they can pay for the government programs they want ;)
They're not all moving into eastern NC. They're also swarming into places like Asheville, Blowing Rock and Charlotte.
Lots of them are moving up from Florida too. Must have been too hot for them down there.
A lot of the blue states have more people who choose to vote with their feet by moving to the red states. This is not necessarily a good thing, and I give you the state of New Hampshire as one example of a past red state that's now a very blue state.
"California is losing people? That's news to me!"
I can't write that the their is a net loss but there has been a steady migration of people out of CA to state like NV, OR and WA for a long time. Many are, as is cited in the RI article, cashing out of the home to live the life of Riley in other states, even Iowa (Money Magazine). Many are pushed out due to the high cost of housing and CA taxes.
Certainly there is no shortage of illegals entering CA.
"Yep, and it seems like they are all coming to Pennsylvania, where they are really screwing the Commonwealth up even more than it already was."
Hey I resemble that! ;-) Just moved from Michigan to PA.
And then you have Narragansett where the local SWAT team will pull you over for driving 26 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. No thank you. I prefer to spend my hard earned money in states that have something to offer other than an evening in the local justice court.
They're losing legal Americans, I'm sure that's more than offset by the illegals entering the state.
Typical liberal response. Reducing the tax burden on the lowest elements in the economic food change does little to develop long term economic growth. If you want business and econmomic develpoment, then reduce taxes on the businesses and the people who own and operate the businesses.
State-Local Tax Burdens, Calendar Year 2005
Rank State State/Local taxes as
% of per capita income
U.S. average 10.10%
1 Maine 13.00%
2 New York 12.00%
3 Hawaii 11.50%
4 Rhode Island 11.40%
5 Wisconsin 11.40%
6 Vermont 11.10%
7 Ohio 11.00%
8 Nebraska 10.90%
9 Utah 10.90%
10 Minnesota 10.70%
11 Arkansas 10.50%
12 Connecticut 10.50%
13 West Virginia 10.50%
14 New Jersey 10.40%
15 Kansas 10.40%
16 Louisiana 10.40%
17 Maryland 10.30%
18 Indiana 10.30%
19 Kentucky 10.30%
20 California 10.30%
21 Arizona 10.20%
22 Michigan 10.10%
23 Wyoming 10.10%
24 Washington 10.00%
25 Iowa 10.00%
26 Mississippi 10.00%
27 Idaho 10.00%
28 North Carolina 10.00%
29 New Mexico 9.90%
30 Illinois 9.80%
31 Georgia 9.80%
32 Massachusetts 9.80%
33 South Carolina 9.70%
34 Virginia 9.70%
35 Pennsylvania 9.70%
36 Oregon 9.60%
37 Colorado 9.50%
38 Nevada 9.50%
39 Montana 9.50%
40 Oklahoma 9.40%
41 Missouri 9.40%
42 North Dakota 9.40%
43 Texas 9.30%
44 Florida 9.20%
45 South Dakota 8.80%
46 Alabama 8.70%
47 Tennessee 8.30%
48 Delaware 8.00%
49 New Hampshire 7.40%
50 Alaska 6.40%
District of Columbia 12.20%
Source: Tax Foundation, 2005
Especially since the lowest elements tend not to move, it costs too much for them to move. What an idiot.
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