Comments on economics, mystery fiction, drama, and art.

Saturday, December 22, 2018

The Decline of Rural Indiana


(I posted this earlier tonight as a comment on a blog.  Posting it here to save t for myself, mostly, but, in case anyone is interested...)
I think that this entire discussion (about urban/rural economic development issues) needs to be very much disaggregated, although there are issues that are common across rural areas. The problems in Indiana are, I would guess, very much different than those in (for example) Montana. Indiana is a relatively small state geographically, and many of the access problems might be different than those in Montana (e.g., simply getting to a hospital or urgent care facility). Indiana and the Dakotas might be more similar; Montana and upper Minnesota might be more similar.
I have a particular interest in Indiana, having lived here most of my life and worked here for nearly 30 years of my professional life. So, some numbers.
There are 3 (contiguous) counties in east north central Indiana that have lost population--consistently--since 1900 (Blackford, Jay, Randolph). Combined, 72,700 people lived in those 3 counties in 1900; 57,800 in 2017. Population loss has been pretty consistent over time; it declined by 19.6% from 1900 to 1950, and by 10.1% from 1950 to 2017. School-age population fell faster than did overall population, in both periods, and the difficulty of getting to and from school has increased (in one way)--the schools are now further away. Since 1950, the high school (and I mean that literally--there's 1 HS in each county now) has been shrinking, making it increasingly difficult to offer a range of elective courses from subject-matter qualified teachers. (This is not a problem confined to rural areas; I could tell a similar story about high schools in Indianapolis.) The average age of the population is now about 20 years older than it was in 1900, with a majority of the population being age 50 or older. Local retail/commercial activity has (unsurprisingly) declined; WalMart pretty much dominates (each county seat has one).
Each county has a small hospital; each is affiliated with a larger hospital system (2 are part of Indiana University Health; the other with St. Vincent Health--the two largest hospital operations in the state). All three counties are still relatively well served by primary care physicians. (Specialists, not so much, of course.) For many specialties, a drive to Fort Wayne--say an hour in each direction--would not be unusual.
Se we have a rapidly aging population. An economy still based heavily on agriculture (and the farmers are aging--according to the 2010) census, more than half of the farmers were over age 60 then). Some infrastructure still exists, but with only about 60,000 people in an area of 1000 sq. m. (60 people per sq.m.), it's pretty sparsely populated--only 30% of the areas population lives in the county seats (1 about 5,000; the other 2, about 6,000 each).
The reality of those three counties is that they house a population that is shrinking and aging; the number of younger people is declining. Economic activity is shrinking. While internet access is OK and cable /satellite TV may work to keep people somewhat connected, this is not an area that seems likely to be attractive to younger people looking for a place to live (and raise families and work). And there are several other clusters of counties in Indiana undergoing similar changes.
I've thought a lot about this over the years (I'm an urban/regional economist, among other interests), and I wish I had some ideas about what can be done. I keep coming up empty (which may be my imagination as well as a reflection of reality).