Demography Links

1. New York Times: Why Are Americans Staying Put?

... “This decline in migration has been going on for a long time now, through all sorts of ups and downs in the housing market,” said Greg Kaplan of Princeton University, who, along with Sam Schulhofer-Wohl of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, has studied the issue in depth. But even with the pressure of high housing costs in many areas, Americans are moving less, Kaplan said. “That might explain why people are moving from San Francisco to, I don’t know, Houston,” he said. “But you’ve seen a decline in migration from Texas to California as well as California to Texas.”

This is not a short-term supply-and-demand issue or a side effect of a slow-growth economy or a shift in demographics. The change is deeper. Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl have won applause from other economists for developing a novel theory to explain this creeping inertia: labor markets in the United States have simply become more homogeneous. Earnings have become more similar across the country, meaning there is less incentive to move from one place to another in search of a raise. The country has also become less diverse, work-wise. Pick any two cities, and chances are they offer a more similar mix of jobs than they did 20 or 50 years ago. We have become less a nation of Pittsburghs and more a nation of Provos. ...

... Even so, many economists believe that if Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl’s narrative is right, there is reason to suspect that a less-mobile populace might not mean a less-dynamic economy. Workers haven’t stopped moving because housing prices or other financial or social concerns are holding them back. They’ve stopped moving because they just don’t see the need to. “Whether it’s a good thing depends on why,” Kolko said. “If your job prospects don’t depend on having to move someplace else, the decline in mobility might be a good thing.”

2. The Atlantic: Stuck: Why Americans Stopped Moving to the Richest States

... "Americans are moving far less often than in the past, and when they do migrate it is typically no longer from places with low wages to places with higher wages," Tim Noah wrote in Washington Monthly. "Rather, it’s the reverse." Why America lost her wanderlust is not entirely clear—perhaps dual-earner households make long moves less likely; perhaps the Great Recession pinned underwater homeowners on their plots—but those still wandering a ren't going to the right cities. ...

... Americans aren't simply moving to the states with the lowest unemployment (Oregon, Tennessee, and North Carolina all have jobless rates above the national average). More importantly, we aren't moving to states with the best records for low-income families getting ahead. In fact, we're often fleeing the best places for a upwardly mobile middle class. ...

... This doesn't make much sense if you envision American families rushing to the most promising metros. It does make sense if you see American families rushing to the most affordable homes. ...

3. Huffington Post: U.S. Population Grows At Slowest Rate Since The Great Depression

... The U.S. population grew by just 0.72 percent in the year ended July 1, 2013, the Census Bureau reported Monday. That’s the slowest growth rate since 1937. Population growth has hovered at super-low levels for the past few years, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan research organization. The trend is "troubling," Frey said, and is due largely to the weak economy. ...

4. New Geography: The Geography Of Aging: Why Millennials Are Headed To The Suburbs

One supposed trend, much celebrated in the media, is that younger people are moving back to the city, and plan to stay there for the rest of their lives. Retirees are reportedly following suit. ...

... But a close look at migration data reveals that the reality is much more complex. The millennial “flight” from suburbia has not only been vastly overexaggerated, it fails to deal with what may best be seen as differences in preferences correlated with life stages.

We can tell this because we can follow the first group of millennials who are now entering their 30s, and it turns out that they are beginning, like preceding generations, to move to the suburbs. ...

5. Business Insider: Female Mortality Rates Are One Of The Strangest And Most Disturbing Trends In The United States

Change in female mortality rates from 1992–96 to 2002–06 in US counties

6. Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century.

7. Forbes: What Would The U.S. Be Like If We Had 124 States?

8. NPR: Overweight People In Developing World Outnumber Those In Rich Countries

... "Over the last 30 years, the number of people who are overweight and obese in the developing world has tripled," says , of the Overseas Development Institute in London.

One-third of adults globally are now overweight compared with fewer than 23 percent in 1980, the report . And the number of overweight and obese people in the developing world now far overshadows the number in rich countries. ...

9. Economist: The high rate of suicide in Asia

10. PBS Newshour: Japanese population declined by record number in 2013

The Japanese population, which has been shrinking for the last couple of years, declined by a record 244,000 people in 2013, according to health ministry estimates.

If the current trend persists, the BBC reports the country will lose a third of its population in the next 50 years. ...

11. Real Clear World: Easing China's One-Child Policy Won't Stop Demographic Decline

In an attempt to mitigate a near-certain demographic future of rapid aging, shrinking labor force and critical gender imbalance, the Chinese government has adjusted its one-child policy. The decision demonstrates that, irrespective of a nation's politico-economic system, governments cannot avoid demography's juggernaut consequences. This mid-course correction in population policy will have marginal effect as China is aging at a much faster pace than occurred in other countries. This, along with a shrinking workforce and critical gender imbalance, will increasingly tax the government. ...

(Related: New Geography: China Failing its Families)

12. Business Insider: These Facebook Maps Reveal Migration Trends Around The World

... The maps use two simple data points offered up by its 1 billion users — where you live and your hometown — to draw a map of how groups of people migrate from place to place. The Facebook Science team was looking specifically for “coordinated migration,” when a significant proportion of a population from one city moves collectively to another city. This could be the result of economics, wars, natural disasters or even state policies. ...

13. Atlantic Cities: Our Favorite Maps of 2013

Dustin Cable's stunning Racial Dot Map actually put every person in America (308,745,538 of us) on a map as individual dots of different colors.