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Dayton
Daily News Editorial...
Loss of kids shows
where the state must focus
Thursday, April 7, 2011
When the news came that Ohio is losing two congressional seats because
of population changes, some people might have tried to find comfort in
the fact that Ohio’s population is not really shrinking, but stable.
The loss of congressional seats is happening because the country is
growing, and the size of Congress is fixed by the Constitution.
Turns out, though, that the state’s population stability is only a
surface thing.
When the news came that Ohio is losing two congressional seats because
of population changes, some people might have tried to find comfort in
the fact that Ohio’s population is not really shrinking, but stable.
The loss of congressional seats is happening because the country is
growing, and the size of Congress is fixed by the Constitution.
Turns out, though, that the state’s population stability is only a
surface thing. Look deeper and you find that Ohio’s population is
shrinking in a crucial realm: number of children and teens.
As Dayton Daily News staff writers Ken McCall and Lawrence Budd
reported Monday, April 4, the state’s under-18 population shrank by 5.5
percent in the last decade, or by 157,588. Only Michigan and New York
did worse in raw numbers. (Several did worse in percentages.)
Bigger losses — in the low double-digit percentages — hit the urban
counties, including Montgomery, Clark and Hamilton (which “led” in the
region with a 13.1 percent drop). But even Miami, Darke, Preble and
(marginally) Greene saw losses.
Warren County bucked the trend hugely with a 33-percent gain. But the
only other Dayton-area county with a gain was Butler, in single digits.
Southwest Ohio lost 4.19 percent.
What the numbers mean, of course, is that the people who are leaving
are young families. And the people who are staying are
disproportionately older and retired. The retirees don’t have to leave
to find work and apparently aren’t leaving for Florida in quite the
numbers some might assume.
Jobs are what it’s all about. Climate has certainly driven some people
south and west, but when you see who’s leaving in the biggest numbers,
you’re confronted with the importance of jobs.
Whereas the country had bad years at the end of the decade, Ohio had a
bad decade, losing hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Ohioans who worry about the state’s future have known for years that
there’s a young-people problem. But the problem has frequently been
defined as being with new college grads and other young people looking
for a fun and engaging lifestyle.
As a result, Dayton has people working to make this area attractive to
young people, culturally and otherwise. They’re doing good work, and it
does relate to jobs: the more attractive a place is to the young
“creative class,” the more employers will set up.
But when you focus specifically on the loss of children, you think in
other terms. You think about jobs first, knowing the top concern of
parents is providing for children.
So what about jobs and Ohio? The last year or so has shown the state
doing better than average in some economic categories, specifically job
growth. If it continues, that trend is what will change the population
statistics.
To keep things moving the right way in the long term, Ohio must avoid
becoming as dependent on one part of the economy as it once was, when
its jobs were known primarily as blue-collar, manufacturing, and
car-related jobs.
Ohio also needs to recognize its weaknesses relative to other states —
climate — and play to its strengths, including a central location, its
low cost of living, and an opportunity to start shaping a new economy
from something a little closer to “scratch” than other states.
Ironically, while Ohio is seeking competitive advantages over other
states, it needs, above all else, for the nation as a whole to thrive,
to buy its products and services and to make investments.
Fundamentally, the state needs to understand that being down must be
used as an advantage, an opportunity to reshape things, a tool for
getting people focused. Understanding the Census statistics can only
help.
Read it at the Dayton Daily News
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