Understanding the City's age/population trends

[Craziaskowboi]

Originally Posted by Picksburg Stillers

Looks like the people who study this sort of thing for a profession agree with my assessment.

Nullspace: Got kids?

From the link:

I tallied up the total increase in college enrollment in Pittsburgh city proper between 1996 and 2008, and ended up with 9,046. The total increase in Pittsburgh residents between the ages of 20 and 29 is 12,511. It's worth noting that the former timeline is 12 years while the latter timeline is 10 years.

Assuming a constant rate of enrollment increase between all colleges in the city proper, 9,046 more students in a 12-year period would equal roughly 7,538 students in a 10-year period. For the sake of appeasing the pessimists, we shall assume that colleges in the city added 8,500 people during the last 10 years. Subtracting the assumed college enrollment increase in the last 10 years from the increase in twentysomething Pittsburgh residents during that same period of times leaves the city ahead by 4,011. It's also fair to assume that the number of graduate students is nearly negated by the number of undergraduate students under age 20. For the sake of appeasing the pessimists, we shall assume that there are 2,000 more graduate students than there are undergraduates under age 20. This still leaves the city ahead by 2,011.

If you subtract everybody in college or graduate school in Pittsburgh city proper, the population growth of twentysomethings is zero at worst, which is a marked improvement over moderately negative like it was during the 1990's. Even zero growth absolutely puts Pittsburgh ahead of peer cities like Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit, and possibly even Cincinnati, Milwaukee and St. Louis as well. Yes, it falls short of Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Portland, and probably Baltimore too, but this still puts Pittsburgh around the middle of the pack relative to all peer cities in terms of attraction and retention of younger residents, and above most peer cities with a heavily industrial past.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Caladium

The steel bust seems like a long time ago to us because we're so close to it (if you consider the historical perspective), but if you take the long view it was only 30 or so years ago. It takes a generation or so for cities to turn around after a major loss.

We've discussed this a lot before. What happened in the steel bust is that young adults in particular disproportionately left the area, because they were the most affected by the employment issues. They left behind an older population that was in or nearer retirement. These people who stayed are gradually passing away or moving away, and meanwhile those young adults who left are having their children elsewhere. If you know what to look for, that whole story is apparent in charts like this (older populations declining, and not being replaced by young children).

Those ripple effects are gradually fading away, but they aren't done yet, because as you point out, it really wasn't that long ago.

[/quote]Incidentally, this is also a large contributor to our whacky educational attainment statistics. Our young adults have among the highest educational attainments rates for a large U.S. metro (right up with DC and Boston). But our older adults steadily lose ground and the oldest cohorts are considerably below average (compared to other U.S. people of their age). That is in part because those older cohorts still have a large presence from the pre-steel bust era, when you could get good jobs here without much education.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by stburr91

I wouldn't anticipate a large increase in the number of the younger people staying once they start families. The people that have the money to send their kids to private schools, will of course be more likely to stay. So, I would say their will only be a modest increase in people staying once they start families.

Even a modest increase would be a big turnaround. And it looks to me like there was something like a 10-20% increase in the non-student young adult population. If there is a similar percentage increase in the young child population coming down the road, that would be pretty significant.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Picksburg Stillers

Looks like the people who study this sort of thing for a profession agree with my assessment.

I've got some comments to that post. Without repeating all the calculations, it looks to me like increases in student enrollment probably only count for around 5000 of the 12500 increase in 20-29 population (maybe a little more, but nothing close to the full amount).