WBEZ | population

Chicago-area population grows at snail’s pace

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:15:00 -0500

The Chicago region has the slowest population growth of the nation’s 10 biggest metro areas, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

By last July, the population of the region’s 14 counties had edged up to 9.52 million — about 0.28 percent more than a year earlier.

“We’re a big exporter of population,” Chicago-based demographer Rob Paral said. “The only thing that offsets it is immigration. Indeed, if the economy spurred even more native-born people to leave the area, it would take [the] flat growth into negative territory.”

As defined by the bureau, the region includes the Illinois counties of Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will; the Indiana counties of Jasper, Lake, Newton and Porter; and the Wisconsin county of Kenosha.

Most of those counties hovered slightly above zero population growth for a second consecutive year. The number of Cook County residents increased by 0.33 percent to 5.23 million.

Two counties in the region actually lost residents. The Indiana counties of Lake and Newton saw population drops of, respectively, 0.31 percent and 0.62 percent.

Kendall County led the region with a population increase of 1.19 percent — a far cry from that county’s double-digit growth as recently as 2007.

Some distant suburbs that were counting on fast growth have taken desperate steps. Yorkville, a Kendall County city 50 miles southwest of Chicago, on Tuesday extended an offer of $10,000 to anyone who buys a new single-family home there.

Lynn Dubajic, executive director of the Yorkville Economic Development Corporation, calls the program a success. “We’ve done nearly 60 permits since its inception about 14 months ago,” she said.

But some experts warn that exurban towns won’t attract hordes again unless gas prices drop. As for the Chicago region as a whole, they say quicker population growth would depend largely on jobs.

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NOTES: These charts stem from WBEZ analysis of U.S. Census Bureau intercensal estimates for July 1 of each year. The 2000 and 2010 estimates reflect bureau adjustments based on the decennial census. Those adjustments distorted the Chart 2 visualization for 2010. Chart 3, therefore, replaces each 2010 estimate with an average (2009 estimate plus 2011 estimate, divided by two). Chart 4 displays metropolitan statistical areas in order of their population growth rate.

Under Population? C’mon Man!

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

The lead story in a recent Sunday Tribune (1/27/13) was a warning about the “dangerous pattern” of declining populations in various American cities, suburbs and states.

Focusing on the Chicago area, the headline screamed, “Where are the kids?” The report went on to offer dire scenarios about the declining number of children and how this will impact the social and financial stability of the region.

On the one hand, I believe the article offered a series of stunning statistics that we have to deal with. According to the U.S. Census Bureau from 2000 to 2010, Illinois had a 6.2 percent drop in children under 10 years of age.

This statistic has an immediate impact on school curriculums and budgets, and theoretically has a long term impact on the number of future workers, and the number of tax payers who will be able to sustain pensioners and the other social/medical support systems necessary for an aging population.

I do not have any issues with the numbers and problems highlighted by the article. But I do not think the problem is really as much about under population as it is an issue of demographic shifts. Yes, these changes need to be addressed, but for me, the real issue facing Chicago, Illinois, the United States, and the world is not under population, but over population.

According to National Geographic Magazine in 2012, the population of this planet surpassed seven billion people, and according to some demographics, our population will be nine billion by 2050.

Seven billion, nine billion…and ??? Frankly, these numbers represent a much larger threat and problem than local demographic shifts in school age children and an insufficient tax base to fund social service agencies.

I believe that the single greatest threat to environmental, economic, and social/political sustainability is over population. The needs and demands of seven billion people endanger the very foundations of life itself. As a people, and as a planet, we need to ask ourselves some very hard and basic questions. Looking beyond the particular issues of local demographic changes, given our present and future expanding population, can we, in the near future, provide food, water, energy and social/economic opportunity and hope for all?

Under Population? C’mon Man!

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 14:40:00 -0600

The lead story in a recent Sunday Tribune (1/27/13) was a warning about the “dangerous pattern” of declining populations in various American cities, suburbs and states.

According to National Geographic Magazine in 2012, the population of this planet surpassed seven billion people, and according to some demographics, our population will be nine billion by 2050.

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chairman of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Rustbelt city wants immigrants, skilled or not

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:27:00 -0600

Lifelong Dayton resident Monica Schultz, 36, brings me to the East End block where she grew up. “This whole street was full of families,” she says. “Kids were running around playing, all within my age range.”

Now no kids are in sight.

Schultz points to a half dozen abandoned houses, including one right next door to her family’s place. She says the city has boarded it up a few times but stray cats keep finding their way in.

“We had a flea infestation problem,” she tells me. “People walking by could see the fleas or feel the fleas or get the fleas. All of the yards in the neighborhood here were becoming infested with fleas.”

Schultz says the city can’t keep up with houses like this. “It’s one of many that need to be bulldozed,” she says. “But it’s on a list.”

Dayton’s population has been shrinking since the 1960s. Most of the area’s factory jobs are long gone. To save the city, Schultz has embraced a new idea: Help immigrants and refugees lay roots in Dayton.

Schultz, who owns a small marketing firm, helped lead community meetings that generated a 72-point plan called “Welcome Dayton.” City commissioners approved the plan this fall. The points range from better immigrant access to social services, to more translations of court materials, to grants for immigrants to open shops in a dilapidated commercial corridor, to a soccer event that supporters envision as a local World Cup tournament.

Schultz tells me the plan could revive a Dayton entrepreneurial spirit that sparked inventions ranging from the cash register to the airplane. “You would have small businesses,” she says. “You would have coffee shops and you would have bakeries and you would have specialty grocery stores.”

Dayton is among several rustbelt cities suffering from population loss and brain drain. To create businesses and jobs, some communities are trying to attract immigrants, especially highly educated ones. Dayton stands out for the attention its plan pays to immigrants without wealth or skills.

The plan even addresses people without permission to be in the country. One provision calls for police officers to quit asking suspects about their immigration status unless the crime was “serious.” Another point could lead to a city identification card that would help residents do everything from open a bank account to buy a cell phone.

City Manager Tim Riordan, Dayton’s chief executive, says welcoming all types of immigrants will make the area more cosmopolitan. “I think there would be a vibrancy,” he says. “We’d start to have some international investment of companies deciding they ought to locate here.”

Foreign-born residents so far amount to 3 percent of the city’s 142,000 residents. For a mid-sized U.S. city these days, that’s not many.

But Dayton’s immigrants and refugees are increasing their numbers and, Riordan says, they’re already making a difference. He points to a neighborhood north of downtown where some Ahiska Turks have settled. “They were refugees in Russia," he says. "Here they’ve bought houses. They’ve fixed them up. And, sometimes when I talk to hardware store owners, people will come in and they’ll buy a window at a time. ‘I’ve got enough money to put in another window.’ It’s slow-but-sure change.”

Not everyone in Dayton is on board with the plan.

In a corner tavern on the East End, a 62-year-old bartender serves the only customer what she calls his last can of beer for the night. It’s a Friday, just 11 p.m., but she’s closing. “The owner can’t pay me to stay any longer,” she tells me, speaking on condition I don’t name her or the bar.

The bartender says the tavern could be on its last legs and tells me what happened to three other East End bars where she worked. They all shut down. She says that’s because many of the neighborhood’s Appalachian families, who arrived for manufacturing jobs after World War II, have moved away.

“NCR closed down, Dayton Tire and Rubber closed down, GM and Delphi and Frigidaire,” she says, pausing only when her customer slams down the beer and bellows something about a “last paycheck.”

The bartender tells me she doesn’t like how Riordan and other Dayton officials are handling the exodus of families who’ve been paying local taxes for generations. “Why won’t he try to keep those kinds of people here?” she asks. “He wants to welcome the immigrants to come in here. What can they do? Where are they going to get the money to fix up anything? What jobs are they going to get to maintain what they fix up here? There are no jobs here. None.”

It’s not just locals like the bartender who have doubts about “Welcome Dayton.”

Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that pushes for strict immigration controls, acknowledges that attracting immigrants would increase the size of Dayton’s economy. “But that’s different than arguing that there’s a benefit,” he says. “Growing an area’s gross domestic product, but not the per capita GDP, doesn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t be very helpful. In fact, there might be problems with that.”

Camarota says the low-skilled immigrants would put downward pressure on wages for workers on Dayton’s bottom rungs.

But Italian-born economist Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis, says low-skilled immigrants would bring what Dayton seeks—and more: “One, they will increase the variety of local restaurants, local shops. Second, they will provide a variety of local services, such as household services, care of the children, of the elderly. Third, they will also develop and bring an atmosphere of diversity and higher tolerance.” Peri says these low-skilled contributions would all help Dayton attract immigrants with more resources.

The willingness of many immigrants to perform manual labor for low pay, Peri adds, could create jobs for longtime residents. He points to landscaping companies: “They will need people who mow the lawn but also they will need accountants, salespersons, a manager and drivers.”

Dayton’s approach—welcoming immigrants with and without skills—is the “optimal strategy,” Peri says.

Whether a city’s immigrant-integration plan can actually attract many people is another question. About an hour east of Dayton, the city of Columbus launched an immigrant-friendly initiative in 2002 and saw its foreign-born population grow fast. But that city’s economy is much more robust than Dayton’s. It had already been attracting immigrants for years.

The results of “Welcome Dayton” could depend on how it works for city residents like a 25-year-old mother whom I’ll call Ana López. (She doesn’t have papers to be in the country so I agreed not to use her real name.) López says she came from the Mexican state of Puebla as a teenager at the urging of a friend who had arrived in Dayton earlier.

López says her first job was in a restaurant with a big buffet. “We didn’t come to take work away from anyone,” she tells me in Spanish. “Rather, there are jobs nobody else wants.”

Now López and her husband have three kids, all U.S. citizens. The family has managed to buy a house. And it’s found a congregation, College Hill Community Church, that provides simultaneous Spanish interpretation through headphones.

But Dayton hasn’t always been hospitable. López says police officers caught her brother-in-law driving without a license and turned him over to federal officials, who deported him.

Looking at the “Welcome Dayton” plan, López says providing the ID cards and removing the police from immigration enforcement could make a difference for families like hers. “These families would tell their friends and relatives to move to Dayton,” she says.

That’s exactly what city leaders want to hear.

Population of Detroit plummets

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:56:00 -0500

The U.S. Census Bureau this week is out with the latest population count for Michigan. Michigan's biggest cities lost people, like lots of places in the Midwest.

Chicago's population declined by almost seven percent in the 2010 census numbers, and Cleveland's dropped by about 17 percent. But Detroit lost a quarter of its population over the last ten years.

It now has the same population that it had in 1910, before the auto industry boom. .

"Now's not the time to look in the rear view mirror," said Robert Ficano, the Executive for Wayne County, home to the Motor City. "Now's the time to look in the future and say 'ok, what do we do to recover and what do we do to stabilize ourselves here?'"

Ficano said he's not surprised by the population decline, given what's happened to the auto industry. He said going forward, economic diversification is key to Detroit's success.

A few Midwest cities gained population, including Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana.

Illinois could lose one seat in Congress

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:58:00 -0600

Illinois will find out Tuesday if, as expected, the state will lose a seat in the U.S. House. U.S. Census officials will release population numbers.

The 435 seats in the House are split up among the states every ten years using Census data. Surprises do happen, but experts are predicting Illinois will lose a seat, dropping from 19 down to 18.

The state lost one a decade ago, and when the district boundaries were re-drawn then, all Illinois incumbents were protected except for downstate Congressman David Phelps.

"I was the fall guy, you might say," Phelps said.

Phelps lost the next election and now holds a senior post at the Illinois Department of Transportation. He said he hopes when congressional boundaries are re-drawn this time around, no incumbents are intentionally protected.

"When you're drawing that map, don't consider who is the present congressperson and trying to save their job," he said.

Illinois will officially find out if it's losing another U.S. House seat later this morning.