The shrinking Suffolk County: Who’s coming, who’s leaving, and why?
Suffolk County, home of Boston, has lost population for two years in a row, writes Jay Fitzgerald in the Boston Herald.
But the population loss, which probably is real and not just an estimate that grossly undercounts recently arrived or illegal immigrants, isn’t the really interesting story. Whether Boston has 590,000 people or 570,000 people is hardly that big of a deal (actually, it can have quite an impact on the city’s finances at the margin, depending on who the missing 20,000 are, but people’s perception of Boston in the grand scheme of things won’t change over those 20,000). What matters more is the composition of the population, and why that composition is changing?
One thing that’s pretty certain is that the number of whites in the city decreases every year, while the number of non-whites increases. Likewise, the number of natives is shrinking while the number of immigrants is growing (no need to take my word for it (Excel spreadsheet from U.S. Census Bureau) – the numbers are merely a continuation of a trend from the 1990′s, the latter brilliantly captured in Guy Stuart’s report Boston at the Crossroads* from 2004; skip all the smooth talk and go straight to page 17). Is that a problem? Well, the dramatic increase in immigrants over the past several years clearly hasn’t made the city more attractive to Americans.
Immigration has also contributed to the increase in economic inequality that dogs both Boston and America in general. This is because immigrants tend to be either unskilled or highly skilled to a much larger degree than natives. Consequently, immigration, at least continuous large-scale immigration, has a doubly negative impact on housing options for natives: Immigrants drive up prices at one end while making neighborhoods less attractive at the other. Immigrants, in particular illegal immigrants, also strain health care, education, and law enforcement resources. Since federal laws are extremly generous with granting non-English speakers with extensive translation and foreign-language information services, substantial immigrant communities are likely to create an atmosphere that is quite simply not particularly American.
Eventually Mayor Tom Menino will have to admit that the city’s population is indeed decreasing, and then he’ll no doubt say some multi-culti and uber-silly statement to the effect that it’s a good thing we’re getting all these immigrants, otherwise the population loss would have been even worse.
A different issue, but related to the population loss, is what Boston college students do after graduation. Do they leave? Or do they stay? There are two schools of thought here, one alarmistic that points to statistics showing that young people leave the city like it has no tomorrow. The other one points out that lots of young people are likely to leave the city since they came to Boston to go to school, not necessarily with the intention of staying.
Having worked with several college students over the last couple of years I lean towards the second theory. Yes, lots of young people do leave the city after graduation. Of the seven students I’ve been dealing with, two have left the state after graduating, one will soon leave the state, another two are planning on leaving the state, while one, a local kid, is still working on completing his doctorate degree. He may or may not stay. Only one has remained in Boston, and he’s also a local with lots of family up here. The leavers were academic passers-by who, to some degree, enjoyed their time in Boston but see little reason to stay here. Where did they go or where are they planning on going?
Texas lured one, Los Angeles another. A couple have their eyes set on New York while one is heading to grad school in the Midwest. What is driving them away from the Hub of the Universe, but not back to the places they come from? Cost is one concern, but clearly not the only one (you don’t go to New York or L.A. to save money). A more pressing one, it seems to me, is that Boston just doesn’t offer much in terms of opportunity. Boston’s job market has not recovered from the dotcom bust, nor from the loss of corporate jobs and head offices.
Perhaps there’s something else that makes Boston seem unseemly as a place for a recent graduate to make his or her professional mark: The abundance of college students. After getting drunk, high, and sexed for four years in Allston, maybe Allston comes across as a place you’d rather not live in post-college? There’s this talk about how Oxford and Cambridge (the other Cambridge) are such great places that students stay on after college, starting companies and what not. Well, Allston ain’t like that.
On top of that you have the other well-known turn-offs: Weather, the sometimes rude manners of people here (that don’t seem so rude if you’re coming from buffoon Sweden, but do if you’re from some genteel Southern or Midwestern suburb), and traffic, to mention the more popular complaints.
On the other hand, some people, like my wife, come here, love it, and don’t leave, come Hell or two feet of snow.
Net Net, I think Boston would look more inviting if it had a more hip and happening job market. Eventually, it will. To paraphrase Josef Stalin, there shall be an economic recovery on our street. Someday.
As for me, I still love this city, after all these, uh, eight years.
* Mandatory Homer Simpson/The Economist joke goes without saying
