'Surprising' Demographic Changes

[Ban my account ffs!]

New census data was released today for Minnesota and there were some surprises, notably in the age distribution.

First and foremost was the notable change in long term migration patterns.  If you look at the 5 year age cohorts in 2000 compared to the corresponding cohorts in 2010 (for example, 5-9 year olds in 2000 are now aged 15-19), you notice a few obvious trends.

1)  People in their early 20s seem to be leaving Minnesota in large numbers... but not permanently.

2)  The next age cohort of 25-29 year olds showed only a negligible decline, indicating people are coming back in their mid-late 20s.

3)  Significant growth is taking place of people in their 30s, especially those in their early 30s.  This indicates not only that are the Minnesotans that leave in their early 20s coming back, but we're also attracting young families that have no previous ties to Minnesota.

4)  The obvious result of the large gains of people in their 30s are large gains in the number of children.  The group of children aged 0-4 in 2000 numbered 329,000.  Those same kids, aged 10-14 in 2010, numbered 353,000... a growth of 7% over the decade.  There has also been growth in younger groups.  Between 2000 and 2004 there were 342,775 births in Minnesota... but that generation of kids grew to 356,000 in 2010.

5)  While there was solid growth in the 0-14 and 30-39 age cohorts, the trend shows stagnation in the 40-44 cohort and declines beginning in the 45-49 cohorts and onward.  This is likely due to immigrants generally being younger, older baby boomers moving to warmer climates, and simply "attrition" (people dying).

Overall, the age structure of Minnesota has evened out greatly in the past 10 years.  10 years ago there were large variations between generation size.  The age 35-39 cohort had 412,490 people while the 25-29 cohort had only 319,826 people.  The echo boom cohort aged 10-14 stood at 374,995 while the 0-4 cohort was down to 329,594.

In 2010, the differences were much smaller.  The largest baby boomer cohort of 45-49 year olds was 406,203 while the smallest cohort of Gen Xers aged 35-39 stood at 328,190.  Gen Y is biggest in the 25-29 cohort at 372,686 with the "echo" bust at 352,342 aged 10-14.  The number of children continues to grow not only as births increase, but as young families move to MN.  Both the 0-4 and 5-9 cohorts sit at 355,500. 

In summation, I'm cautiously optimistic about Minnesota's future.  While the baby boom was disproportionately large here and the bust disproportionately small (a fall of 35% in births between 1959 and 1973 compared to 29% nationwide), we have done a good job attracting young people since 1990 which has meant the shock will be much smaller than people thought even 10 years ago.

If you look at North Dakota... their prospects seem even better for the moment.  While everybody lamented continued future population loss and a drastically rapid aging of the population... the 2010 census has showed something completely different.  The largest groups in North Dakota are no longer the baby boomers, but people in their 20s.  Births have risen dramatically in recent years there as people settle down with good paying jobs.

[Serenity Now]

That's some good research there! I'm afraid I have nothing to comment with but I thought this deserved to be acknowledged

[Person Man]

Well yeah. The Northern Midwest is a great place to start a family but not a good place to start your career or retire.

[ilikeverin]

I suspect quite a bit of the dip in 20-25 is also due to a proportionate rise in Minnesotans going out of the state for college.  After all, our schools teach you that Everyone Goes To College (tm) (because, relative to other states, Minnesotans do go to college in droves), and these days it's getting more and more rare for students to just consider in-state schools for their education.