Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory Sullivan says the Commonwealth’s population is undercounted. Even if it’s true, so what?
The United States Census Bureau recently reported that Massachuetts population shrank between mid-2003 and mid-2004 by about 4,000 people. That is of course a very small, even unnoticeable change, but remarkable nonetheless since America’s population is growing at brisk pace, due to immigration and high birth rates among immigrants. In fact, Massachusetts was the only state to experience net population loss in said period.
I have not seen any thoghtful reactions to, nor insightful analysis of the population loss. Worse, Massacusetts Inspector General Gregory Sullivan’s reaction is denial: He argues that the Commonwealth’s population is undercounted. According to the Boston Globe, Sullivan argues that some 30,000 college students are uncounted by the Census Bureau, representing almost 0.5% of the state’s total population. However, if I understand the article correctly, Sullivan is talking about a difference in levels, rather than trends. That is, the Commonwealth is marginally losing population, but from a higher population base than the Census Bureau estimates.
Even if the state is marginally gaining population, which may be what the IG hints at unless I’m misreading the article, there is no denying the basic problem: Massachuetts is losing whites, lots of whites, pushed out by rapidly growing numbers of immigrants and their offspring. That’s the real problem, and it won’t go away just because our politicians refuse to acknowledge it. Whether the state had a small net loss or a small net gain of population last year isn’t really a big deal, but it is a very big deal that whites - who, on average, are better educated and make more money than non-whites - are leaving the state, undermining its tax base at the same time as demand for government services increase.
(It is quite possible that Massachusetts is also experiencing a net loss of African-Americans, a topic often discussed anecdotally, but a substantial immigration of blacks from Africa and Haiti probably helps concealing that outmigration: 26% of blacks in Greater Boston are foreign born).
