Reasons to roam
Many are leaving Michigan, but there are a few pluses for those who stay
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Michigan was one of just four states to actually lose people last year -- about 5,200, net -- and the population is expected to drop by at least that much again this year.
This might not be such a bad thing -- more jobs, more room, less traffic for those who stay -- if we got to pick who had to go. Surely we all know someone whom Michigan would be better off without.
But people get to make up their own minds, and the departing folks already include many who would have been important to this state's future if they had just been able to find one for themselves here.
The population loss adds another layer of urgency to efforts to restructure the Michigan economy.
You'd think a state with around 10 million people would hardly notice a loss of 0.1% of them, a number equal to the year-round population of Cheboygan. But think about who leaves a state when it's fallen on hard times: People who can. That means people with the resources to relocate or the brains to have found opportunities elsewhere and the energy to pursue them. Such people would logically fall into just a few groups: retirees with secure benefits, entrepreneurs, people with skills or experience in demand elsewhere, and recent college graduates.
Retirees have always been the largest group to leave Michigan, usually for warmer climes. College grads, well, you can't blame them. They are highly mobile and those student loans have to be repaid. Maybe they will come back, maybe not. That likely depends on what Michigan can create for them to come back to.
Michigan is hardly Iraq, but it's interesting to note that the United Nations estimates about 12% of Iraq's population has fled since the U.S. invasion turned into a bloody civil war. The first people to get out when things deteriorated were those who could -- the educated, upper class of Iraqi society, professionals who had the means to leave. Their absence has hampered efforts to get the country functioning again and, should Iraq ever be stabilized, raises the question of whether there will be enough capable people around to run it.
When the Michigan economy bottoms out -- sometime in late 2008, economists say -- will there be enough smart, industrious people around for the rebound? Nothing attracts creative people and entrepreneurs like other creative people and entrepreneurs.
Michigan needs to develop some reason beyond hope to keep those folks home for the next year or two. It's nice that the cost of living here is relatively cheap compared to the coastal or southern hot spots, but the cost of living doesn't concern you much if you're not making one.
Kurt Metzger, a demographer with United Way of Southeast Michigan, says the population drop from 2005-06 was the first for Michigan since the severe recession of the early 1980s, when outward migration topped 100,000 a year. The states of New York, Rhode Island and hurricane-stricken Louisiana also lost people last year while Texas, Florida and California were the leading gainers.
Metzger says Michigan out-migration began ticking upward again in 2001 and probably hit about 65,000 last year. Immigration offset some of the loss, as did Michigan's natural population change, 40,733 more births than deaths. But Metzger says that "natural growth" has decreased 45% since 1990, as births continue to drop and the average age of the state population increases.
Another consequence of this population drop, one that is most evident in Detroit, is the cost of maintaining a societal infrastructure built for X-number of people when only Y-number are around to pay taxes to support it.
"The tri-county area," Metzger says, "has fewer people today than it did 30 years ago and yet less open land. That is a result of some really stupid decisions about infrastructure and land use, and now we're all paying for it."
Since creative people like to go against the tide, maybe there's a way to market this. What about a commercial showing the stream of U-Hauls moving households out of Michigan and a lone traveler walking in the opposite direction? "Michigan," the announcer could say, "where we don't know what we're waiting for, but the lines are sure shorter."
RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.
[Source]
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Michigan was one of just four states to actually lose people last year -- about 5,200, net -- and the population is expected to drop by at least that much again this year.
This might not be such a bad thing -- more jobs, more room, less traffic for those who stay -- if we got to pick who had to go. Surely we all know someone whom Michigan would be better off without.
But people get to make up their own minds, and the departing folks already include many who would have been important to this state's future if they had just been able to find one for themselves here.
The population loss adds another layer of urgency to efforts to restructure the Michigan economy.
You'd think a state with around 10 million people would hardly notice a loss of 0.1% of them, a number equal to the year-round population of Cheboygan. But think about who leaves a state when it's fallen on hard times: People who can. That means people with the resources to relocate or the brains to have found opportunities elsewhere and the energy to pursue them. Such people would logically fall into just a few groups: retirees with secure benefits, entrepreneurs, people with skills or experience in demand elsewhere, and recent college graduates.
Retirees have always been the largest group to leave Michigan, usually for warmer climes. College grads, well, you can't blame them. They are highly mobile and those student loans have to be repaid. Maybe they will come back, maybe not. That likely depends on what Michigan can create for them to come back to.
Michigan is hardly Iraq, but it's interesting to note that the United Nations estimates about 12% of Iraq's population has fled since the U.S. invasion turned into a bloody civil war. The first people to get out when things deteriorated were those who could -- the educated, upper class of Iraqi society, professionals who had the means to leave. Their absence has hampered efforts to get the country functioning again and, should Iraq ever be stabilized, raises the question of whether there will be enough capable people around to run it.
When the Michigan economy bottoms out -- sometime in late 2008, economists say -- will there be enough smart, industrious people around for the rebound? Nothing attracts creative people and entrepreneurs like other creative people and entrepreneurs.
Michigan needs to develop some reason beyond hope to keep those folks home for the next year or two. It's nice that the cost of living here is relatively cheap compared to the coastal or southern hot spots, but the cost of living doesn't concern you much if you're not making one.
Kurt Metzger, a demographer with United Way of Southeast Michigan, says the population drop from 2005-06 was the first for Michigan since the severe recession of the early 1980s, when outward migration topped 100,000 a year. The states of New York, Rhode Island and hurricane-stricken Louisiana also lost people last year while Texas, Florida and California were the leading gainers.
Metzger says Michigan out-migration began ticking upward again in 2001 and probably hit about 65,000 last year. Immigration offset some of the loss, as did Michigan's natural population change, 40,733 more births than deaths. But Metzger says that "natural growth" has decreased 45% since 1990, as births continue to drop and the average age of the state population increases.
Another consequence of this population drop, one that is most evident in Detroit, is the cost of maintaining a societal infrastructure built for X-number of people when only Y-number are around to pay taxes to support it.
"The tri-county area," Metzger says, "has fewer people today than it did 30 years ago and yet less open land. That is a result of some really stupid decisions about infrastructure and land use, and now we're all paying for it."
Since creative people like to go against the tide, maybe there's a way to market this. What about a commercial showing the stream of U-Hauls moving households out of Michigan and a lone traveler walking in the opposite direction? "Michigan," the announcer could say, "where we don't know what we're waiting for, but the lines are sure shorter."
RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.
[Source]
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