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.”
Voters in Colorado and New Hampshire: Take note.
I find this table pretty meaningless. Oregon is listed as number 36, for instance. The 9.6% rate is income tax, all of it. Also, the "Progressives" have set up the state income tax to disallow exemptions that the IRS allows. Also the county of Multnomah / City of Portland have an additional income tax of 1.5%.
Across the river Washington (#24)has no income tax, but a hefty sales tax. If you have no or low income the rate is higher in Washington. If you are earning more than you spend the situation is very different.
Also there are more ways to easily avoid sales tax (internet shopping, which is still exempt, for instance) then to avoid a state income tax.
So I'm not sure where you got it but it seems pretty bogus to me. Maybe it's not so simple to do a 1 through 50 ranking of taxes, given the dynamics of the different types.
Many are high density as well.
There is a base safety issue that trumps even taxes. I don't want to live as a disarmed peon. I especially don't want to live as a disarmed peon in a dense urban environment filled with armed criminals.
I left NYC after being mugged and shot at. The turning point was being laughed at by the old guys in the crony-run gun shop across for the downtown police station. "Gedda load of this kid! He tinks he can jus come in here and buy a gun".
I moved to California and did just that. I never looked back and would never again consider living in such a place. That's just me, but I suspect there are many others who feel this way.
I think it would be very useful for one of these socialist hell holes to collapse, utterly. That would provide the object lesson. NY almost did in the 1970s, but got a bail out. I'm not sure who the poster child is. It is one of the things the R's should have been much harder on. Mass. should be punished for Ted and John. If the cash-transfer Big Dig had been ended would they have had another decade of prosperity? Do they produce ANYTHING of value in that state? (PhDs from MIT do have some value I suppose. BA's from Welsley (Hillary) less.)
That's the plan. Didn't you get the memo?
Indy has been getting more lib for some time, thanks to the influx of Illini - Chicagoans in particular - and liberal migrants from other states. It really, really sucks.
Take heart! I have a theory that as some states get more Democrat and socialist, they will become magnets for losers and parasites (the Democrat "base") from other states. So, just as the nation's cities are concentrated parasite nests within states, certain states will end up being BIG concentrated parasite nests within the country. Presumably, this will leave more than enough states to give an electoral advantage to the Republicans and provide safe haven for normal, hard-working traditional American families (the Republican "base").
1 Maine 13.00%
4 Rhode Island 11.40%
6 Vermont 11.10%
12 Connecticut 10.50%
32 Massachusetts 9.80%
49 New Hampshire 7.40%
I love this chart. It's particularly useful to people who lump all New England states together because of the federal politics, but don't see that some states have low taxes and it's the cost of living that kills people. Interesting that Maine and N.H. each elect two Republican senators, but with such a divergent approach to taxation.
Suburban Philadelphia is also turning blue--that's the big problem of the last 15 years. Outside of suburban Philadelphia, the Anthracite country, and Pittsburgh, there's not a lot of state left to be red. Yes, a lot of square mileage, but not many people.
"Talk about denial. He's only looking at property taxes, not the entire picture. The entire northeast will eventually collapse in on itself."
More than likely. Virtually all of those states, with the possible exception of NH, are becoming forests of FOR SALE signs.
People are voting with their feet for nicer weather and better prospects.
I have driven through practically every state in the union. I have a sure-fire way of determining which states have low social spending & taxes, and therefore higher growth: the condition of their Interstates and state highways.
IOW, high tax/spend states tend to consume their 'seed-corn' (commercial infrastructure) in order to fund their various social experiments/wealth transfers.
It really is astounding how accurate this rule of thumb is. If you drive the I-95 from Boston to NYC via Providence, you'll be amazed at its condition (and it's not just the weather).
Any even better comparison is to drive from OK->AR->LA->MS. It's practically instantaneous: once you cross into LA the the roads start to look like RI! Then, you as you cross the state line into MS on the I-10, it's once again an instantaneous transformation into a perfectly paved/maintained super-highway.
AL drops a little bit, then straight across FL on the I-10 is one of the most perfect roads in the US. Ditto for the I-95: this heavily trafficked interstate is pristine through SC & NC, while GA shows some effects of its wealth transfer policies.
For a real eye opener, travel some of the state roads in NC. What a mind blow - perfectly landscaped & maintained interchanges. Coming back to CA is like driving in Mexico.
Quote: "Especially since the lowest elements tend not to move, it costs too much for them to move. What an idiot."
Especially since the lowest elements pay very little in taxes, if anything at all. Thus, rebates for the poorest is nothing more than a liberal re-define of the word "welfare" to now really be a "rebate." Here in NJ, Corrzine tried that crapola with his proposed property tax rebates. Turns out, people at the income level to qualify for the rebates probably could not afford to own property in the first place. Even better, renters making less than 50K could qualify for the property tax relief. Welfare masked as "rebates."
The Northeast is gone and won't be back until it is in ashes which is happening faster than the liberals thought possible. The worse it gets, the more whacky the liberals running the Northeast states get. My wife jokes that Corzinne will outlaw moving trucks in NJ pretty soon and/or put up a wall in order to slow the flight. I would laugh if I couldn't see it happening.
The Democratic majority now in the statehouse in Concord New Hampshire is eager to move my state higher up the list. We have a Democratic governor who claims he will veto any proposal for a sales or income tax, but I don't trust him with a Dem majority in the Legislature.
Is that Rte. 10 paving job done yet?
Oh, I forgot. While I lived there, RI was known as the state with roads that started no where and went no where LOL
OB
RI's loss of population is the result of its socialism.
Arizona, California, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania—are raising their minimum wage. The federal minimum is $5.15 an hour. The new state minimum wages go as high as $7.50 an hour. And businesses will either raise their prices, stop hiring people at all, increase robotization of their production lines, or close their doors and relocate to other states. Economics 101, again. My guess is that the new laws in North Carolina and Pennsylvania were made possible because of the influx of New Yorkers, and in Arizona by the influx of Californians. Why is it that people leave a state because the state government has screwed up their lives, and then go on to replicate the situation in their adoptive state? I swear, one new law I’d support would be that people moving to a different state should not be allowed to vote on local matters until they’ve lived there for five years.
But that’s a rant for another time.
http://www.theothersideofkim.com/
Don't worry. Most folks from Mass and RI tend to go to New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, northern Virginia, and Florida, and not in the "suthun" parts of those latter states either. ;-)
How about lower taxes, cheaper housing, better schools, and better jobs. I wonder if they realize it is the red states that are growing?
I couldn't agree more. Additionally, I have always said that only people who pay income taxes should be permitted to vote. Of course, that would all but incinerate the rat party.
A big problem that southern states seem to have is that they tend to organize schools at the county, rather than the municipal level. On the plus side, this usually means lower property taxes. On the negative, this usually means that kids from the ghetto parts of the county go to the same schools as those kids in the white collar precincts, something unheard of in most of the NE.
Of course, I'm also for abolishing most public education, so you can take what I say with a grain of salt.
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