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I was looking at some data the other day and began noticing a rather interesting trend. It would appear that rural wooded counties in the US are aging at a much faster rate than rural agrarian counties. This has become particularly apparent in the last 10-20 years, whereas the differences were minor before. What has been causing such a sharp deviation. Employment is obviously one factor, but could it be a decline in demand of all paper products due to technology and the shift of forestry to the South where they have a longer growing season that results in faster tree growth?
Nope, counties like Berkshire County, MA, or Litchfield Ct, attract retirees from the cities (Boston/New York) so the demographics are old, while when one retires they tend not to want to work on a farm
Yo mean the people living in the counties age faster, right?
How long does it take them to go from age 20 to age 80? It takes 60 years in my county.
No, I'm talking about the age structure of the population, or population pyramid. Most of the rural wooded counties have very high percentages of the population over age 65 with very few younger people compared to the national average. This is particularly true in the northern tier counties in the lower 48. Exceptions to this rule are mostly the Deep South states where many of the paper companies and forestry has moved to. Georgia Pacific would be an example. Maine, however, has experienced a dramatic decline in its paper products industry with many mills closed and a much older age structure in its rural counties.
I'm not really sure what the OP is asking ... BUT here in Georgia, the mountain counties north of Atlanta are very popular with retirees, as second homes for Floridians and others seeking that lifestyle. Except for apples and poultry (and in more recent years, vineyards), North Georgia has NEVER been a big agriculture area. Georgia's forestry industry (like most all big-dollar crops in the state) is concentrated in South Georgia, below the fall line (Columbus to Macon to Augusta) where the land is much flatter and soil more conducive to growing crops. In fact, the vast majority of acreage making up Georgia's multi-billion dollar forestry industry are LONG LEAF PINE forests that grow in the coastal plain.
I was looking at some data the other day and began noticing a rather interesting trend. It would appear that rural wooded counties in the US are aging at a much faster rate than rural agrarian counties. This has become particularly apparent in the last 10-20 years, whereas the differences were minor before. What has been causing such a sharp deviation. Employment is obviously one factor, but could it be a decline in demand of all paper products due to technology and the shift of forestry to the South where they have a longer growing season that results in faster tree growth?
Wooded land means no lawn mowing. Would attract more retirees is my guess.
I'd be interested in seeing a map or link to a data set to see which sets the OP is talking about, but if wooded is percent of woodland cover, I would suppose that in agrarian areas there is opportunity for close to one child per family to stay in agriculture, but in mining or logging areas, or in areas of agricultural abandonment becoming wooded, there would be less opportunity for even one child per family. Except in certain specific vacation/retirement home development areas I would think that aging in place is a much larger dynamic than retirement migration.
I was looking at some data the other day and began noticing a rather interesting trend. It would appear that rural wooded counties in the US are aging at a much faster rate than rural agrarian counties. This has become particularly apparent in the last 10-20 years, whereas the differences were minor before. What has been causing such a sharp deviation. Employment is obviously one factor, but could it be a decline in demand of all paper products due to technology and the shift of forestry to the South where they have a longer growing season that results in faster tree growth?
that is interesting.
my guess is that people are no longer retiring on the farm, or in flat, boring agrarian towns. The baby boomers are retiring in less agriculturally useful, but "prettier" areas like mountains, near lakes, etc. For example, white collar office-working Atlantans might retire to the woods of north Georgia, whereas their grandfathers might have stayed in south Georgia on the farms their whole lives.
it is perhaps the gentrification of rural forestland on a wide scale.
No, I'm talking about the age structure of the population, or population pyramid..
Oh, OK. I guess your use of the word "faster" threw me off", and I didn't understand how a county could "age". Some counties have been in existence since the 1600s.
"Age faster" brought to mind some catalyst that one puts into wine-making to make it reach an apparent maturity in less time. A person who "ages faster" reaches maturity or a debilitating geriatric condition at a younger chronological age. I'm still not sure what you are really getting at. Do you simply mean that wooded counties have a population with more people in higher age brackets?
Last edited by jtur88; 12-16-2012 at 08:33 AM..
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