Hoosier Demographics: Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying

Ball State Economist, Michael Hicks, has a good column that I saw in the Indiana Citizen entitled “What the census tells Hoosiers about the Future.” I don’t know that there is a ton of new information in there, but one point that he lays out more bluntly than I usually see is that communities basically have a choice between growing or shrinking. Maintaining the status quo really isn’t an option. Either path has consequences. The growth consequences tend to present a happier set of challenges than the consequences of decline.

We see that most of the growth opportunities in Indiana come from immigration (70%) and lesser amounts from births (21%) and in-migration from other states (9%). And the places that attract growth feature strong public services, particularly schools. These features are paid for with taxes. A community seeing shrinking population usually sees the people with human capital leaving first (i.e. “brain drain.”) In general, therefore, it stands to reason that places in Indiana that oppose immigrants and taxes, are probably going to have a bad time in the coming years.

The entire column is well worth reading, but Hicks concludes:

The ability to make a choice to grow on your own terms, or decline, should be carefully guarded and nurtured by elected officials—particularly at the state level.

Still, any column about growth and decline needs to be honest about the future. Six of the 10 fastest-growing counties are in the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Nine of the 10 fastest-growing counties are urban, and nine of the 10 fastest-shrinking counties are rural.

There is room to grow in all the fast-growing places. There is little room to shrink in communities that are in decline.

I know many residents in small Hoosier towns want lower property taxes and are wary of immigration. Just be clear-eyed about the consequences of those choices, and make sure you are planning for smaller, less prosperous towns, school consolidation, longer response times by fire and police and continued brain drain. Those are all policy choices.