Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 16, 1993 TAG: 9308170061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Census data show some evidence of the phenomenon during the 1970s, but it really showed up during the 1980s.
"It's striking," said demographer Michael A. Spar of the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service in Charlottesville.
"Whatever was causing it, it's getting worse. You're losing a greater proportion."
The apparent loss was tracked by following a selected group of young people across the decade to see how it changed in size.
The group was aged 15-19 in 1980 and 25-29 in 1990. It's a span that covers the period when such a move is statistically most likely to occur - in the late teens to early twenties - yet is broad enough not to be affected by college students unless they don't come back.
The Roanoke Times & World-News checked census figures for the cities of Roanoke, Salem, Radford and Bedford and the counties of Bedford, Botetourt, Craig, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski and Roanoke.
Three localities showed growth in the group over the decade: Bedford County, up 15 percent; Bedford City, up 1 percent (three people) and Roanoke City, up 14 percent.
All of the other localities in the Roanoke and New River Valley areas showed decreases in the age group during the 1980s.
"That tells me the group is finishing high school, maybe sticking around a little while, some going to college, but finally taking off," said agricultural economist Thomas Johnson of Virginia Tech.
"It's not what you want to see," said ur an sociologist J. John Palen of Virginia Commonwealth University. "It indicates an area that's having trouble in its employment base."
Across the entire region, there was a decline of 15 percent in the size of the group between 1980 and 1990. The decline was 5 percent in the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area and 30 percent in the New River Valley.
"That's the students," said senior planner Steve Via of the New River Valley Planning Commission staff.
He was referring to the students of Radford University and Virginia Tech. Some of them show up in the 15-19 group, but students generally finish with college and move away before entering the 25-29 group.
Also reflected in the New River Valley numbers are the rural counties of Floyd, Giles and Pulaski. Each lost young adults during the decade; collectively it came to nearly 1,000 people.
They moved for all kinds of reasons, Via said. But one of the big ones was "lack of employment opportunity in general."
If the trend continues into the year 2000, Brett Rader could be one of the missing in the next census. He's a 22-year-old who was raised in Giles County and loves it for "the relaxed atmosphere and especially the scenery."
But Rader will have to make some career decisions when he finishes at Virginia Tech next spring, and one of them will be whether he can afford to remain in the county.
He'd like to stay, Rader said by telephone from the Giles County Housing Development Corp., where he has a summer job. But he wonders whether there will be "gainful employment" and sufficient cultural and recreational opportunities.
"You don't have all the amenities you could get in a larger metropolitan area," he said. By "larger," he said he means something like Charlottesville or Roanoke, but nothing bigger.
"I'm not a city guy," he said.
Rader is not unlike lots of young people who leave rural areas, according to Hollins College economist Mary Houska. They tend to migrate to regional centers such as Roanoke.
When they move to those centers, they of course add to the young adult population there. Michael Spar said this phenomenon may help to explain the exceptional experience of Roanoke during the 1980s.
There, the size of the group that achieved adulthood during the decade not only didn't shrink, but actually grew by 14 percent. The change was greater among whites - blacks actually declined in number within the group - and took place despite a negative net migration from the city.
Though admittedly "very speculative," Spar's suggestion is that the growth may have come from young adults who moved to the regional urban center to begin their working lives.
"Maybe the negatives of the city simply don't operate as strongly at that age group," he said.
It would be a mistake to attribute all of the change in the age group to a perceived lack of economic opportunity. People leave for countless other reasons. They may get married and follow their new spouses. They may join the military. They may go away to college and never come back.
As Salem Planning Director Joe Yates points out, they may leave simply because they're young and they've got the itch to move.
"They want to get out from under the apron strings," said Yates, himself a Salem native who went away to school and military service but returned to make his career in his home town. "You don't care where it is if you're not tied down."
Some of the movement of young adults isn't disappearance but mere shifting within an area - moving from an apartment in Salem to another one in Roanoke, for example. Such people may have been living in different localities when the census-takers came, but they're still part of the same regional population and work force.
All of which can dilute the effect of the change shown by the census, but not wash it away.
If every young adult who left Salem, Roanoke County and Botetourt County during the 1980s could be shown to have simply moved to Roanoke, more than 1,000 still would be missing from the local census count. If the declines in Montgomery County and Radford were discounted as the comings and going of college students and erased from the books, nearly 1,100 young people still would be unaccounted for.
Any way you crunch the numbers, the flight of young adults from the region looks less like a popular notion and more like a demonstrable fact.
by CNB