Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 15, 1993 TAG: 9308170017
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Natural change is a result of births and deaths. It tends to take care of itself. That is, there are more births than deaths in the normal course of things, and the result is a gradual increase in the overall population.
Population's other motor, migration, is the measure of people moving from one place to another.
"That's what really makes the difference," said agricultural economics Professor Thomas Johnson of Virginia Tech.
What he means is that migration, not natural change, currently is the dominant factor in local population change. It was the other way around during the Baby Boom (roughly from the mid 1940s to the mid-1960s), but birth rates are lower now and there is a lot of migration - much of it related to the ups and downs of the economy.
In the region roughly defined as the Roanoke and New River valleys, four localities lost population during the 1980s despite having more births than deaths. "Net out-migration," as the demographers call it, was the reason.
In Giles County, 1,660 more people left than moved in. Net out-migration was 1,572 in Pulaski County, 373 in Salem and 6,106 in Roanoke, according to census-based tabulations by demographer Michael A. Spar of the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service in Charlottesville.
Conversely, net in-migration was the principal factor in population growth within the region. It exceeded natural change in every case, sometimes dramatically.
In Bedford County, for example, the population jumped from 34,927 in 1980 to 45,656 in 1990, largely through growth in the Lynchburg suburbs. That's an increase of 30.7 percent, and 25.3 percent of it was due to migration versus 5.4 percent from natural change.
(Montgomery County and the city of Radford also registered large in-migration gains, but they're attributable to Virginia Tech and Radford University students. They're counted as local population and they have a pesky way of skewing census figures in all kinds of categories.)
Statewide, Virginia's 15.7 percent population growth during the 1980s was split almost evenly between migration (8 percent) and natural increase (7.7 percent). Spar attributed the lack of a more dramatic gap to high birth rates in super-growth areas such as Tidewater, where people not only migrated in great numbers but "turned out" lots of babies after they got there.
Though the census figures will tell us the extent of migration, they are limited in other ways. They don't say where people have come from, except for designations such as "same state," "different county" and "same house." Nor do they tell us where people go when they leave.
Thus the 6,000-plus who left Roanoke during the 1980s may have gone to Atlanta or Charlotte, or they may have moved no further than Bonsack. Truth is, it was a mix; some Roanokers moved into the suburbs and some moved much further away.
Similarly, those who moved into the city (or any other locality) came from both near and far.
We do know that migration commonly is related to job availability and economic status. It is "economically sensitive," to use the term employed by Robert deVoursney of UVa's Center for Public Service.
If a local economy is in the doldrums, there will be movement away, he said, its extent proportional to the seriousness of the economic problems. People will move in search of work. And just as some areas lose people through migration, there likely will be gains in localities where the economies are strong.
The population of Virginia Beach, which deVoursney calls the "900-pound gorilla of growth," grew by 49.9 percent during the 1980s. Of that, 32.9 percent was due to migration.
Positive net migration - more people moving in than out - clearly is a sign that work is available and people are going after it.
"In terms of economic development, you probably want in-migration to be occurring," Spar said. "Generally, negative migration is regarded as not good. To me that says there is a lack of opportunity in the area."
The effect of a migrant ripples through the local economy more profoundly than that of a newborn. Though migrants cost the local government in terms of services, they also generally pay taxes, spend money and generate jobs in support services, home construction and other areas.
Out-migration happens to rural areas just as it does to cities. Rural economies are manufacturing-based, too, and therefore are subject to the same erosion as urban economies.
Indeed, deVoursney said, rural areas can be hit even harder because of the relative scarcity of jobs there.
"If you lose a job and you live in a metro area there's a reasonably good chance of finding another one," he said. "But in non-metro areas it's much harder."
That helps to explain the net out-migration in Giles and Pulaski counties, where opportunities are limited and there is plenty of evidence that the young are leaving to look for greener fields elsewhere.
Historically, many have turned to the communities their families have always relied on for out-of-the-ordinary shopping, medical care and other services not available at home. Places like Roanoke or, in recent years, the Blacksburg-Christiansburg area.
"The urban area you relate to is the first place you think of when looking for a job," said economist Mary Houska of Hollins College.
To a degree, she said, these migrants from the "vast hinterlands" of Western and Southwest Virginia replace the sons and daughters of the Roanoke Valley who themselves are leaving in their own quest for good jobs.
They're not satisfied with work in service or retail, which are beginning to dominate the job base. But for migrants from even more distressed economies, such jobs may be an acceptable way to start their adult lives.
"They're satisfied with less opportunity," Houska said.
Regardless of whether they're leaving Roanoke or Pulaski, such people typically are in their late teens to early 20s. Statistically, that's the most frequent time for migration from one labor market to another.
Such movement declines sharply after people begin to settle in and have children, and becomes proportionally less likely with age except in times of unusual distress.
"At age 35 you really don't want to start over again," Houska said.
Out-migration isn't invariably job-related. Sometimes people leave a locality - especially a core city - because they're retiring, or because they simply want to live in the suburbs. Frequently such people commute back to work in the city they left.
They're typically in their 30s and 40s, said Deborah Kendall, a census analyst on the staff of the Roanoke-based Fifth Planning District Commission.
"They've been in the work force for a few years and have established a career and a family. They're typically well-educated. They have a well-paying job that allows them to live in a place where the property values are a little higher."
There is a wealth of evidence to substantiate the flight to the suburbs, both statistically in declining core-city populations and physically in the still-flourishing suburban culture.
Botetourt County Planning and Zoning Administrator Chuck Supan cites new subdivisions in the south part of his county that are populated by people who work elsewhere - often Roanoke - but live where they do for "the rural ambiance."
It is the belief of Floyd County Administrator Randy Arno that most of the newcomers to his county are either retirees and second-home owners, or people who commute to jobs elsewhere. He said commuters to the Roanoke Valley often can be found living in places like Locust Grove and Copper Hill, whereas commuters to the New River Valley may favor the Indian Valley and Alum Ridge areas as a place to live.
Seventy percent of Craig County's working people travel outside the county to their jobs, said County Administrator Richard Flora - two-thirds of them to the Roanoke Valley. Flora also said the county is increasingly popular among retirees, some of them from as far away as New Jersey.
In Franklin County, Smith Mountain Lake has been the magnet for new residents whether they's workers, retirees or second-homers.
"There is very weak growth in other parts of the county," said Chris Chittum, interim director of planning and zoning for the county. "All of them are going around the lake."
The city-to-suburb migration has been going on for years and is taking place all over the country. It's the American way. But there is a downside:
The flight of prosperous taxpayers to the suburbs erodes the revenue base of the core cities, which are left to deal with higher concentrations of the poor, the elderly and others who depend on public assistance and/or urban amenities like bus service and readily accessible medical care.
"You leave if you're young," UVa's deVoursney said. "If you're old, you live on transfer payments [food stamps, e.g.] if you can find them."
This dilemma is at the heart of the growing movement for re-examination of Virginia's local government system - a system that keeps major core cities from broadening their tax base through annexation, and is thought by some to be killing them from within.
by CNB