They come and they go and they come back
2020 U.S. Census enumerator’s kit
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary’’ in GoLocal24.com
The 2020 U.S. Census figures, in general, weren’t surprising. Population growth slowed to 7.4 percent in the stretch since 2010, the lowest since the Great Depression, when the population only rose 7.3 percent. The Sunbelt continued to draw many new residents, though not as fast as most demographers had predicted. So the Sunbelt’s megastates – Texas and Florida – picked up congressional seats – Texas two and Florida one; the economic dynamo North Carolina also got one new seat. (I don’t include California in the Sunbelt. It lost a seat.)
The big news around here (which surprised me) was that Rhode Island held onto enough people to retain its two congressional seats. Massachusetts will keep its nine seats and Connecticut its five. I attribute much of Rhode Island’s minor triumph to the great wealth-and-job-creation machine of Greater Boston, which spills into Rhode Island.
The Census data let New England maintain its 21 seats in the U.S. House, where for the first time in a half-century none of the region’s six states lost a seat!
Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the more attractive and prosperous parts of the North, especially New England, see substantial population increases in the next decade as the Sunbelt problems cited below lead to some reverse migration, spawned by our relatively moderate weather (and lots of freshwater) and our rich technological, health-care and education complexes, beauty, generally low crime rates and sense of community and history. In any event, I doubt that the population of the country as a whole, or the economy, will surge in the Twenties, which unlike the last century’s Twenties, probably won’t be “roaring’’ for long. The demographics, including our low birth rate, don’t suggest a long-term national boom (or crash) is coming.
The assumption has been that the Census data will give the increasingly far-right Republican Party yet more clout. Maybe in the short run, but the folks moving into Sunbelt states from the Northeast, Rust Belt and California include many liberals who continue to want the sort of Democratic Party-promoted public services they had back north and in California. Thus, especially in Sunbelt metro areas, Democrats are fairly steadily increasing their share of the electorate. Strange political times! The Democrats have been moving toward European-style social democracy while parts of the GOP embrace neo-fascism.
The migration to the Sunbelt, although it’s slowing, is putting ever-increasing strains on its states’ generally thin social services and inadequate public infrastructure, as witness the Texas power-grid collapse in February.
The Sunbelt increasingly faces the heavy traffic, soaring home prices and other aspects of density that metro areas of the Northeast and California have long had to deal with. Addressing them will require major political and policy changes. The low taxes (except sales taxes), cheap real estate and wide open roads will not continue in large parts of the Sunbelt.
And this comes as the South faces the nation’s worst effects (with the possible exception of California) of global warming – including stronger hurricanes and other storms, more floods, more droughts and longer heat waves. God help Florida and the Gulf Coast as the seas keep rising.
The climate crisis has already turned away some people from the South, even as it requires very expensive infrastructure work to address. That means higher taxes, which the GOP hates more than anything else, especially when they’re imposed on the wealthy. The two most important Republican constituencies are the very rich (many of them via inheritance) and rural and exurban voters.
So I think that the Sunbelt will become increasingly politically competitive. The Census figures strongly suggest that. And New England will do all right, with or without “climate refugees.’’
Going forward, the New England states would do well to cooperate in formulating tax and other policies so as not to cannibalize themselves in marketing the compact region to business and individuals, especially to those in the Sunbelt and the Mountain States, the other high-growth region, that might be having second thoughts about where they’ve moved to in recent years.