Moving to the City

Wall Street Journal:

New data, taken from a Census report on population trends released Thursday, offer a snapshot of the challenges America's rural counties face as they struggle with aging populations and a stream of younger residents heading elsewhere for work.
Nearly 60% of rural counties shrank in population last year, up from 50% in 2009 and around 40% in the late 1990s. In all, almost eight in 10 of the counties that lost population over the past three years were outside of metropolitan areas, according to an analysis of Census data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. Over half of those counties were heavily dependent on farming, manufacturing or mining, he said.
Rural America—which encompasses roughly three-quarters of the nation's landmass—has seen slower population growth for a decade, as more young people move to urban and suburban areas for jobs and even aging retirees seek out more-populated places to live.
The population decline from pockets of Midwestern states such as Iowa, Illinois and Kansas comes at a time of rapid expansion elsewhere on the Great Plains. North Dakota, now in the midst of an oil-drilling boom, has become the country's fastest-growing state after more than half a century of stagnation. As of last summer, six of America's 10 fastest-growing metro areas were in or near the Great Plains, including Fargo, N.D., and Odessa, Texas, the Census data shows.
By contrast, population losses are now gathering steam in areas of the industrial Midwest, including northern Pennsylvania and western New York.
Greenwood County, in eastern Kansas, is among those struggling with a falling population. The county, whose seat is in the small town of Eureka, has seen its population decline about 4% between 2010 and 2013, following even bigger declines in the 2000s.
The declines have reduced its tax base, prompting the county to raise land taxes on the mostly agricultural businesses in the area. It also makes providing services harder. Cole Conard, a businessman and one of the county's three commissioners, said one of the area's school districts had 1,050 students in 1970—a figure that has since dwindled to less than 400. "You can't draw businesses in because we don't have people," he said.
Aging remains a big driver of population declines across much of rural America.
The number of births in the U.S. last year exceeded deaths by the smallest margin in 35 years, according to Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire. All told, in roughly a third of America's counties, more people died than were born. This "natural decline" was most acute in rural counties, about 40% of which tallied more deaths than births last year—a rate more than twice what was seen in metro counties, Mr. Johnson said.

It is interesting that the story refers to Kansas. Of all the plains states, Kansas has been most aggressive in trying to fulfill the conservative dream of doing away with income taxes and slashing revenue sharing from suburban areas to rural and inner-city urban areas. That plan has pummeled school funding and led the Kansas Supreme Court to order a change in the funding system. That conservative dream is a nightmare for the rural areas which are the backbone of support for conservatives. Tax policy and spending policy in the Kansas style will devestate rural areas and do more to drive young people to the cities. Once they get there, they will probably be more likely to vote for Democrats. Republicans don't just face a demographic death spiral, they face a policy-driven one, too.