Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 15, 1993 TAG: 9308170044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Don't worry. It's not the climate or something in the water.
It's just statistics. Specifically, the U.S. Census, 1990 edition.
It shows the region's median age as 34.2. That's higher than the national figure, which is 32.9.
What it means is that the regional population is a little top-heavy with older folks and a little light at the other end, in comparison with the rest of the country.
"This is the result of many forces," said John Knapp, research director for business and economics at the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service in Charlottesville. "It's not unusual for slow-growth areas."
Virginia's population grew by 15.7 percent during the 1980s. The country's grew by 9.8 percent. The Roanoke region's grew by 6.9 percent.
That's what Knapp meant by "slow-growth."
There are all kinds of reasons for it. The birth rate is lower. People are living longer. There isn't an excess of migration by the elderly, thanks to the area's reasonably hospitable climate, relatively low cost of living and the availability of such amenities as competent medical care, said Robert deVoursney.
"I think we all think old people all retire and head for Florida," said deVoursney, who is on the staff at the Center for Public Service.
"Actually, they tend to stay where they are."
Fact is, said Shirley Travis of Virginia Tech's Center for Gerontology, retirees may someday be in-migrating in significant numbers. The recent opening of new senior citizen living facilities in the Roanoke and New River valleys suggests that the region may be positioning to become a retirement center.
In-migration of retirees is beginning to be significant in some of the more rural counties of Northern Virginia, Travis said, and it could spread to the New River and Roanoke valleys. If it did, one of its effects would be to continue pushing the median age upward.
It's something wise politicians and local government officials will keep an eye on, according to Manley Elliott Banks, a Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor
"They're going to turn out and vote," he said. "They're a group that the politicians can't ignore."
Sixty-nine percent of those aged 65 and older voted in the 1988 presidential election, Banks said, compared with 37 percent of those ages 18-24.
"If a politician had to choose between campaigning on a college campus or in a retirement center, I have no doubt they'd go to the retirement center," Banks said. "At least, that's what their political consultants would tell them."
Banks said the elderly are "high-demand service users." They're closely attuned to the availability of transportation, medical services and social programs affecting their well-being. Many also live on fixed incomes. For those reasons, the professor said, the elderly are a force to be reckoned with not only by big-time politicians but by local councilmen and supervisors.
"They have a vested interest," he said. "These people are the most likely to vote. When I teach American government, that is one of the truisms I can give with enormous statistical support."
On the other side of the equation are the young. The region's relatively low percentage of infants and school-age youngsters is a trend of some 20 years standing. The underlying cause, according to Mary Houska, is economic.
"There have been fewer opportunities in the last 20 years, and particularly more recently, to attract and hold people who are looking for a career," said Houska, who teaches economics at Hollins College.
Such people go elsewhere to work, she said. "And if you don't have adults [in the population], you don't have children."
The numbers support her. Age distribution comparisons show the region to be lower than the nation not only in children and school-age youngsters, but in the people who would be their parents.
They also show a relative deficiency of young adults in the late teens, 20s and 30s. That is the prime time for career-based moves, especially the years immediately after high school, and there is strong evidence that such people are leaving the area.
The conventional wisdom is that they are looking for work they cannot find in the Roanoke-New River area.
Houska said the history of declining regional job opportunities reaches all the way back to the closing of Roanoke's American Viscose Corp. plant in 1958 and extends forward through the coal recession, the Norfolk and Western-Southern Railway merger, cutbacks at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and the purchase of Dominion Bank by First Union Bank of North Carolina.
Though the region enjoys relatively low unemployment and steady job growth overall, the new jobs tend to be in lower-paying categories such as sales and service while the high-paying manufacturing work that once anchored the job base is inexorably disappearing.
Manufacturing jobs declined an average of 18.3 percent across the region during the 1980s, according to Virginia Employment Commission figures. At the same time, there was an average growth of 35.2 percent in service jobs like that of mail-order telephone operator.
"Unemployment isn't too bad, but under-employment is very high," said Harry Wilson, director of the Center for Community Research at Roanoke College.
Growing, but slowly
Roanoke lost people during the 1980s. Births exceeded deaths, as usual, but some 6,000 more people moved out of the city than moved into it. The same thing happened in Salem, though on a much smaller scale (373 people).
The experience of the two cities was not exceptional. Cities everywhere lost population during the decade; the cause usually cited was flight to the suburbs.
The New River Valley counties of Giles and Pulaski also lost population during the decade, a reflection of cutbacks in the regional industrial base.
At the same time, a few localities in the region were growing impressively. Bedford County grew, as did Montgomery and Franklin counties and the city of Radford. The presence of Virginia Tech, Radford University and Smith Mountain Lake are cited by a Virginia Tech study as the principal spurs to growth in those localities. Other localities in the region had more modest growth.
Overall, gains outpaced losses. The Roanoke Valley grew despite declines in the core city and Salem. The New River Valley grew despite losses in the two rural counties.
The upshot was that the overall region grew in population, though not as fast as the state as a whole. And certainly not as fast as the "Golden Crescent" that arcs across the eastern part of the state from Northern Virginia to Tidewater and practically vibrated with population growth during the 1980s.
According to deVoursney, half of the localities outside the Golden Crescent lost population during the decade.
And some localities are hurting much worse than Roanoke, he said. Like Richmond, which lost 7.4 percent of its people (compared with Roanoke's 3.7 percent).
Despite the decline of the 80s, Roanoke added population during the two decades between 1970 and 1990, whereas the hapless state capital was losing 46,500 people - a disheartening 18.7 percent of its population - during the same period.
"I look at Roanoke and I see a place that isn't growing quickly, but there is a good, diverse economy," deVoursney said. "It gives some downside protection."
Roanoke and Botetourt counties gained people between 1980 and 1990. That more than offset the losses in Roanoke and Salem, resulting in net growth for the Roanoke Valley. But because of the cities' losses, the valley's growth rate (6.4 percent) was less than half that of the state (15.7) for the decade.
The picture looks a little prettier when the numbers for Bedford and Franklin counties are painted in. Portions of both counties are de facto if not official parts of the Roanoke Valley. Bedford County grew at a robust 30.7 percent during the 1980s, and the rate for Franklin County was 10.7 percent.
Because the populations of both localities were relatively small, the percentages are somewhat misleading. Moreover, something like half of the two counties' new population can be found not around Roanoke but around Smith Mountain Lake or in the suburbs of Lynchburg.
Indeed, given the well-documented tendency to abandon the core city and head for the suburbs when possible, the likelihood is that Bedford and Franklin counties made their gains partly at the expense of Roanoke and Lynchburg.
The New River Valley, like the Roanoke Valley, grew during the 1980s despite losses in rural Giles and Pulaski counties. Driving the increases were population rises of 20.5 percent in Radford and 16.4 percent in Montgomery County.
The Roanoke-New River region's population will continue to grow, but also to trend downward as a percentage of the state population. And the four localities that lost population during the 1980s will continue on the same path through the 1990s and into the next century, according to VEC projections.
Larry Robinson of the VEC said its projections are based on past population patterns, with adjustments based on regional input regarding factory openings or other developments that could affect population.
The population of Bedford city will remain essentially flat during the next 25 years, according to the projections. Bedford has the highest median age in the region (39.9) and a greater percentage of over-65 people (24.8) than any other locality. It was the only locality in the region to have more deaths than births in both the 1970s and the 1980s.
"It's the Elks Home," said Dennis Gragg, executive director of the Central Virginia Planning district Commission.
Gragg was referring to the Elks National Home, which is in Bedford. It has 180 residents with an average age of 83, according to executive director Bill Pickett.
In a city as small as Bedford (1990 pop.: 6,073), Gragg said, "That's enough to skew the numbers dramatically."
by CNB