What are we doing wrong?
Such was official, establishment, Vermont’s reaction to last month’s Census results, which showed that the population in the state had grown by 17,000 human beings over ten years, a 2.8 percent increase.
“Anemic,” was how the Burlington Free Press described the growth rate. Without citing anything that might be considered evidence, outgoing Gov. Jim Douglas’ spokesman, David Coriell, suggested that Vermont’s taxes and cost of living, both on the high side, were keeping away hordes who might otherwise be flocking their way hither.
Somewhat more abstractly, Governor-to-be Peter Shumlin reacted to the news by promising to focus on job creation, perhaps unaware that the state with the fastest rate of population growth for the 1990s (Nevada, 35.1 percent) also has the highest unemployment rate (14.3 percent; Vermont has the fifth lowest rate, 5.7 percent.).
What seemed absent from the discussion were two significant questions: (1) Could Vermont’s low (though not the lowest) rate of population growth owe as much or more to where Vermont is and who Vermonters are than to anything the state and its citizens are doing? (2) Is low population growth so bad?
Where Vermont is, of course, is up north. The abnormally warm New Year’s Day notwithstanding, it’s cold up north. Americans, including quite a few Vermonters, love warmth and sunshine. That combination is what the economists would call a disincentive to move to the state.
Who Vermonters are is no mystery, either. They are, almost to a man-and-woman-Jack of them, non-Hispanic white folks (roughly 98 percent according to older figures. The racial breakdown by states of the 2010 Census will not be available for at least another month.).
The ethnic demographics of the state “might have something to do with” the low growth rate, said Will Sawyer, the manager of the Vermont State Data Center of the University of Vermont’s Center for Rural Studies. “Non-Hispanic whites have a lower fertility rate. Hispanics and Latinos have a higher fertility rate. They are also younger.”
The same is true of African-Americans.
The state’s minority population is growing, and as it does, so may the fertility rate.
Ethnicity may not fully explain why Vermont’s population grew more slowly than the nation’s (9.7 percent) or the Northeast’s (3.2 percent). When more statistics are released later this year, they may show that non-Hispanic whites nationwide grew at a slightly faster rate than Vermont’s 2.8 percent.
Still, it’s hard to exaggerate the connection between a population dominated by white Anglos and a population that will not grow. According to a Census Bureau projection, “the non-Hispanic White population would contribute nothing to population growth after 2030 because it would be declining in size.”
And Vermonters are not only white Anglos; they tend to be educated white Anglos. Almost 44 percent of Vermonters between 25 and 34 are college graduates, compared to not quite 39 percent nationwide, and college graduates are less likely to have large families, if they have families at all.
To be sure, Vermont has always been overwhelmingly white and Anglo, yet it used to grow faster. In fact, Sawyer said, “averaging out the decades of growth between 1960 and 1990, Vermont grew faster than the country as a whole. “
But that was not because of anything Vermont did or did not do. It was because of what outsiders did, both individually and collectively. The individuals were the “back-to-the-landers” who began flocking to Vermont at the end of the 1950s. The collectivity was the federal government, whose Interstate Highway system reached northeastern Vermont in the 1970s, later than in most of the rest of the country. Without those two external boosts, the rate of population growth was likely to slow.
The question of whether population growth is necessary – or even desirable – is a bit more complicated. Fast growth does not mean no problems. Texas, now a majority minority state (48.3 percent non-Hispanic white in 2006, no doubt less than that now) grew so fast in the 1990s that it will gain four seats in Congress. But it has a lower median household income than Vermont, a much higher poverty rate, and the highest rate of residents without health insurance in the country. It is also facing a $25 billion deficit on a two-year budget of roughly $95 billion, proportionately far greater than Vermont’s impending budget shortfall.
Almost all economists agree that a state (town, nation, county, whatever) does not have to grow larger to grow richer. If it did, then a big, heavy bicycle would cost more than a thin, light, one. Obviously, the opposite is true. As in so many cases, the source of the wealth is not the material, but the intelligence that enables construction of a lightweight bike.
So a state and its businesses can thrive without population growth. Vermont could see its small growth rate as a problem to be solved, or as an opportunity to lead the nation into an era of economic growth but population stability, perhaps a necessity in a finite world.
But perhaps not all businesses can thrive without more people. Bill Ryerson of the Population Media Center (headquartered in Shelburne, but global in scope), an advocate of population stability, pointed out that “real estate developers have a motive (for supporting population growth) because it means more housing starts.”
Lots of other businesses would do just fine without population growth, but as it happens, real estate developers and their allies in the home-building industry have political clout in just about every state, including this one. They help frame the conversation in a way that assumes that more people are always better.
They may be, in some places, but perhaps not here. Ryerson also pointed out that,” one of the reasons some people move to Vermont is that it is the most rural state. We have the highest percentage who live in small towns and villages, and the smallest who live in metro areas. That’s what attracts people to live here.”
Though, as Ryerson acknowledged, which state is “most rural” depends on how “rural” is defined. He certainly has a point, leading to what might be called the Vermont Population Paradox: the more people who move to Vermont, the less attractive Vermont becomes to precisely the kind of people who want to move to Vermont.
Up to a point, the state could alleviate that contradiction by trying to concentrate new housing in town and village centers. But those politically potent real estate developers and homebuilders make higher profits putting up suburban-style subdivisions and the shopping centers that serve them.
Besides, some Vermonters want more subdivisions, more big box stores in more shopping centers, and more people shopping in them. That’s not a paradox, though. That’s just a political debate.