Editor’s note: Art Woolf is an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont. He served for three years as state economist for Gov. Madeleine Kunin beginning in 1988.
[M]ore than half of Vermont counties have fewer residents today than when the 2010 Census count was taken, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates for 2018. Populations shrank in the three Northeast Kingdom counties — Caledonia, Essex and Orleans — and in the four southern Vermont counties — Bennington, Rutland, Windham and Windsor. That continues a longer trend in those four counties. They have fewer residents today than in 2000, nearly two decades ago.
Even in counties where the population is growing, including Chittenden, the largest and fastest-growing county in the state, growth has been slower than the national average. Since 2010 the U.S. population has increased by 5.8%. Chittenden County recorded a 5.1% growth rate. That’s like being the tallest player on your basketball team, but still shorter than the average player in the league.
The cause of these low population numbers is clear. First, in the Northeast Kingdom and all four southern Vermont counties, the number of babies being born is less than the number of people dying. That is, what demographers call the natural rate of population increase is negative.
Second, every county in the state with the exception of Lamoille and Grand Isle have experienced net out-migration — more people are moving out of those counties to other Vermont counties or to other states, compared to the number moving in.
Even in Chittenden County, over the past eight years nearly 2,000 more people have moved out than moved in. Yet Chittenden County today has 8,000 more residents than in 2010. Half of that is due to more births than deaths and the rest is due to immigrants. That was not the case in most other counties, where the number of immigrants was too low to balance out the other factors causing populations to decline.
For much of the state, including the Northeast Kingdom and the southern counties, a declining population has not been seen for nearly a century. In the 1920s and 1930s, many Vermont counties lost population, and even in the 1940s and 1950s growth was very low.
When we get new numbers from the 2020 Census, in December of that year, they are likely to show the state’s population to be just about the same as in 2010 — another statistic that will be a throwback to numbers not seen for nearly a century. Projections from the state show the state’s population remaining unchanged through the 2020s. The University of Virginia’s Cooper Center’s analysis has Vermont with fewer people in 2040 than in 2000. If that happens it will be the first time in the state’s history that population declined over a 40-year, or even 30-year, period.
Given that future for the state, we can expect Chittenden and Franklin counties, and maybe a few others, to gain population. That means the population decline in most Vermont counties will continue for the next two decades.
What can be done to arrest that decline? Vermont is a rural state, and rural America is depopulating, so some of Vermont’s population problem is beyond our control. If — and it’s a big if — Americans begin to prefer rural lifestyles, we could see people moving into those counties.
Even Chittenden County suffers from the same anti-rural preferences that are now current. The county’s largest city has only 42,000 people, and one-quarter of those are college students. The entire Burlington metropolitan area, which includes Grand Isle and Chittenden counties and parts of Addison and Franklin, with only 220,000 people, ranks 202nd in the nation, out of 383 metro areas. That’s pretty small, ranking just behind Bellingham, Washington, and Lafayette, Indiana. Putting it another way, 85% of Americans live in a metropolitan area larger than the Burlington metro area. By national standards, even Burlington is rural.
Absent a major change in people’s preferences, what can we do to reverse Vermont’s population decline? Here’s a short list:
1. People want to live in or near larger metropolitan areas. Do what we can to increase Burlington’s population, and while we are at it, nearby towns such as Winooski and South Burlington.
2. Make it easier to build housing for new residents (and people already here) so it’s available and more affordable.
3. Try to attract immigrants. Only 4% of Vermonters were not born in the U.S. compared to 14% nationally. Immigrants are attracted to places with economic opportunity and affordable housing. Do what we can to promote both.
4. Most non-U.S.-born Vermonters were born in Canada. Target and encourage businesses and people to move south of that border.
5. Analyze current and future policies and their likely impact on migration — will they attract people to Vermont and its counties or will they encourage people to leave?
6. Acknowledge that the decline in population all over Vermont, and the out-migration we are seeing, is a serious problem.
There is no magic bullet that will attract people to Vermont. But we shouldn’t provide ammunition that encourages them to leave, either.