Demographics: Sometimes Long-Term Trends Mean More
It is tempting to focus on the headlines when considering how tomorrow will be similar to or different from today. The war in Ukraine, inflation, COVID pandemic, China’s increasingly prominent military and economic power, and, at least in the USA, racial equity and justice are certainly forces that all organizations will be dealing with for some time, but focusing too much on the trends that get the most attention risks ignoring even more meaningful factors that might matter even more in the long run. The inexorable march of demographic change is accelerating and, we would argue, having a more significant long-run impact on independent and International schools than COVID or Ukraine.
To be sure, COVID and geopolitics are top of mind right now, but demographic shift is a constant factor that has been at work so long—since bipedal hominids first walked out of the Rift Valley—that it is easy to miss until events overtake us. We believe that demographic events and their effects have overtaken many school leaders. We intend to unpack some of the demographic shifts in a series of posts starting with the one to follow.
Regular readers will know that we are fans of Morning Brew, a daily update of general and business news from Neal Freyman and his team. The Brew crew did a nice, concise description of recent U.S. Census Bureau data about how the pandemic is bending the arc of demographic change in the United States. Between 2020 and 2021, peak season for pandemic effects, Morning Brew finds four USA-centric take-aways in this graphic from the Census Bureau.
Americans chased the sun [and, we might add, places with fewer pandemic-related restrictions]. Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Atlanta collectively gained 300,000 residents from mid-2020 to mid-2021.
That came at the expense of “superstar cities.” New York, LA, Chicago, and San Francisco lost more than 700,000 people combined over the same time frame.
Growth is heavily concentrated. The 10 fastest-growing counties in the US made up nearly 80% of population growth during the period studied.
Size doesn’t matter. Micro areas, or regions with a core city of fewer than 50,000 residents, reversed their years-long stagnation by increasing their populations. Kalispell and Bozeman in MT and Jefferson, GA, led the way.
This reflects an acceleration of underlying trends for the first three points, while the resurgence of micro areas in the fourth point seems a new-ish trend with a yet-to-be-determined long-term outlook. It most certainly means that, for many schools, the future looks smaller at least for a decade or two. Best to understand your school’s demographic future now, build models to gauge what being smaller means if this is your destiny, and know where the parameters are given your debt structure or other long-term commitments.