McBride is no sunny ideologue — some even thought him a cynic back in 2005 when he started the blog and predicted the housing bust and financial crisis.

McBride is just looking at the numbers and drawing logical conclusions.

In yesterday’s post The Future is still Bright!, he notes clear reasons for optimism about the economy over the next few years:

It still appears economic growth will pickup over the next few years. With a combination of growth in the key housing sector, a significant amount of household deleveraging behind us, the end of the drag from state and local government layoffs (four years of austerity mostly over), some loosening of household credit, and the Fed staying accommodative (even if the Fed starts to taper, the Fed will remain accommodative).

His optimism for the coming decades relies largely on demographic projections. Right now, we have a bubble of people — the baby boomers — moving out of the workforce and into a very expensive old age that will put all sorts of strain on the economy. But then we see those demographics shift. People will still be living longer, but those older cohorts will not be the largest in the population. From McBride:

And in the longer term, I remain very optimistic too. I mentioned a few long term risks in my January post, but I also mentioned that I wasn’t as concerned as many others about the aging of the population. By 2020, eight of the top ten largest cohorts (five year age groups) will be under 40, and by 2030 the top 11 cohorts are the youngest 11 cohorts. The renewing of America was one of the key points I made when I posted the following animation of the U.S population by age, from 1900 through 2060.

Here’s that animation, with population in millions along the y axis:

There’s much more data and numerous other graphs in this post at Calculated Risk.

I’ve enjoyed Wigh’s work but have never met him. Wigh and I are in general agreement on many things, but I think I have a different sense of Savannah’s scale. A 2010 column in which he called for “displaced neighborhoods” along Derenne Avenue is a case in point.

I generally agree with the thrust of Wigh’s final column, which calls for Savannah to have a more diverse economy and to do a better job of recruiting skilled and educated outsiders.

But I found Wigh’s column overly pessimistic on several points. First I should note a certain tone that suggests the author thought his biweekly columns would have a major impact on discourse in the city. I’ve been writing three columns a week for many years and I can assure you all that generally the best a columnist can hope for is to effect a kind of gentle turning — a look or even a glance in a new direction that eventually has some sort of meaningful impact.

Here’s a passage from Wigh’s column:

This city needs an influx of new skilled people so that we have a better shot at major employers, can create more jobs for those without them and have an honest chance of cutting the poverty rate significantly.

Instead we have local politicians forever demanding jobs for the poor. It isnâ€t happening, and it isnâ€t going to happen. Instead they should be minding the recommendations of SEDAâ€s Stanford Research Institute report, and they should be beating the drums for growth.

Are politicians “forever demanding jobs for the poor”? That characterization is certainly not how I hear the public discourse. Just before that passage, Wigh bemoans our high rate of unemployment, but that’s not simply a local issue. The entire state and much of the country has high unemployment. I agree that we should not sugarcoat the numbers — and for several years before, during, and after the recession I routinely implored local leaders to act with more urgency as the economy collapsed.

But things are doing better, much better — and that’s worth acknowledging.

I agree with Wigh that SEDA and other organizations need clear strategies and ambitious visions like those outlined in the Stanford Research Institute report, which Wigh detailed in a fall 2012 column.

Oddly, Wigh’s final column last week talks about “minimal population growth.” The region has been growing steadily, however — faster than many American metro areas.

Wigh also notes that Savannah “lags its peers” and elsewhere suggests that we’re dropping farther behind Charleston.

But who are Savannah’s peers?

The Savannah metro area has about 365,000 people. I’m going to take a minor risk and assume that Wikipedia’s list of metro areas by population contains no significant errors. The five metros just ahead of us and just behind us in terms of population are Tallahassee, Fayetteville, Trenton, Huntington-Ashland, Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, Eugene, Ann Arbor, Rockford, Ocala, and Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island.

The Charleston metro area has about 700,000 people — almost twice as many as Savannah. Jacksonville has about 1.4 million. New Orleans has about 1.25 million. Even small Asheville has more people than we do — about 435,000.

That list also includes data about population growth from 2010 to 2012. The Savannah metro area is in the upper echelon.

Now, I’d love to see more of that population growth within the city limits of Savannah. And I’d love to see renewed and redoubled efforts to lure mobile young Americans with skills and education — and to give college graduates more reason to stay here.

But the U.S. economy is still slowly recovering from the worst recession since World War II. The housing bust and financial crisis were simply devastating. I’m actually surprised that Savannah’s economy is recovering as fast as it is.

About two in three eligible blacks (66.2 percent) voted in the 2012 presidential election, higher than the 64.1 percent of non-Hispanic whites who did so, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. This marks the first time that blacks have voted at a higher rate than whites since the Census Bureau started publishing statistics on voting by the eligible citizen population in 1996.[…]

Blacks were the only race or ethnic group to show a significant increase between the 2008 and 2012 elections in the likelihood of voting (from 64.7 percent to 66.2 percent). The 2012 increase in voting among blacks continues what has been a long-term trend: since 1996, turnout rates have risen 13 percentage points to the highest levels of any recent presidential election. In contrast, after reaching a high in 2004, non-Hispanic white voting rates have dropped in two consecutive elections. Between 2008 and 2012, rates for non-Hispanic whites dropped from 66.1 percent to 64.1 percent. As recently as 1996, blacks had turnout rates 8 percentage points lower than non-Hispanic whites.

Overall, the percentage of eligible citizens who voted declined from 63.6 percent in 2008 to 61.8 percent in 2012.

Both blacks and non-Hispanic whites had voting rates higher than Hispanics and Asians in the 2012 election (about 48 percent each).

The numbers were largely driven by black women, who turned out at a 70.1 percent rate. Black women over the age of 45 turned out at over 76 percent.

Many of us were dubious of the conventional wisdom (on the right, at least) that blacks wouldn’t show up last November because of the struggling economy, general disillusionment with Obama, Obama’s support for gay marriage, and so forth. But it’s certainly an interesting development to see the turnout among blacks actually increase from 2008.

Looking at the longer-term trend in a graph from The Diversifying Electorate—Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections) is especially interesting:

Black turnout in 1996 was only 53.0 percent. It jumped 3.8 points in 2000, 3.2 points in 2004, 4.7 points in 2008, and another 1.5 points in 2012. So the rate was increasing pretty dramatically even before Obama appeared on the ballot in 2008.

Given the recent history of white voting patterns, one could argue that black turnout might be near a point of maxing out. On the other hand, we’ve clearly seen some incredible get-out-the-vote operations put in place by various Democratic organizations in the last couple of election cycles.

By the way, Obama took about 3/4ths of the vote among both Asians and Hispanics, where turnout remains quite weak.

Interesting stuff.

There’s much more in the report.

According to Census data released Thursday, in 27 of the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas, city centers grew faster than suburbs between July 2010 and July 2011. By contrast, from 2000 to 2010 only five metro areas saw their cores grow faster than the surrounding suburbs.

Viewed as a whole, U.S. suburbs have grown faster than city centers in every decade since the 1920s, when rising automobile ownership inspired Americans to begin fleeing cramped city quarters for leafy suburbs, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. Urban population growth accelerated markedly at the end of the last decade, he added.

One reason for the shift back to urban areas may be improvements in quality-of-life factors, such as safety, that traditionally drove residents to the suburbs. In the past decade, cities have become considerably more livable. Crime rates have fallen in some urban centers; downtown areas that once were dotted with closed businesses now feature new cultural amenities such as museums and baseball stadiums.

From USA Today:

“In the 1960s and 1970s, economic downturns used to impact the central city more than its suburbs,” says Robert Lang, professor of urban affairs at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “Now the reverse is true.”

Several forces are at play: fewer households with children, the high cost of energy and commuting and “a redefinition of lifestyle that places a premium on urban amenities,” Lang says.
Growth slowed the most in the Sun Belt, especially in areas hard hit by the housing bust and foreclosures, Frey says. They include places such as Henderson, Nev.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Fresno.
Larger cities such as Atlanta, Denver, Dallas and Washington, D.C., experienced a surge last year.

“Some of these areas are holding on to (people) who normally would have gone to the suburbs in a better housing market,” Frey says. “The question is whether this will continue when the suburban housing market improves.”

Lang thinks it will but that suburbs also will grow again — especially those that offer urban conveniences such as mass transit and housing within walking distance of jobs and services.

Some details from the U.S. Census:

Anything above 1 percent annual growth is solid. Annual population growth of 2 percent is pretty huge.

We’re certainly seeing investors betting on increased population within the Savannah city limits. Significant numbers of new apartments are on tap in the immediate downtown area at Drayton Tower, One West Victory, and the Talmadge Lofts.

From the U.S. Census’ Most Children Younger Than Age 1 are Minorities, Census Bureau Reports:

The U.S. Census Bureau today released a set of estimates showing that 50.4 percent of our nation’s population younger than age 1 were minorities as of July 1, 2011. This is up from 49.5 percent from the 2010 Census taken April 1, 2010. A minority is anyone who is not single-race white and not Hispanic.

The population younger than age 5 was 49.7 percent minority in 2011, up from 49.0 percent in 2010. A population greater than 50 percent minority is considered “majority-minority.”

These are the first set of population estimates by race, Hispanic origin, age and sex since the 2010 Census. They examine population change for these groups nationally, as well as within all states and counties, between Census Day (April 1, 2010) and July 1, 2011. Also released were population estimates for Puerto Rico and its municipios by age and sex.

There were 114 million minorities in 2011, or 36.6 percent of the U.S. population. In 2010, it stood at 36.1 percent.

There were five majority-minority states or equivalents in 2011: Hawaii (77.1 percent minority), the District of Columbia (64.7 percent), California (60.3 percent), New Mexico (59.8 percent) and Texas (55.2 percent). No other state had a minority population greater than 46.4 percent of the total.

From the New York Times:

While over all, [non-Hispanic] whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the countryâ€s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Signs that the country is evolving this way start with the Oval Office, and have swept hundreds of counties in recent years, with 348 in which whites are no longer in the majority. That number doubles when it comes to the toddler population, Mr. Frey said. Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, and have slipped below half in many major metro areas, including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis.

A more diverse young population forms the basis of a generational divide with the countryâ€s elderly, a group that is largely white and grew up in a world that was too.

As noted in the NYT piece, the U.S. has a pretty sorry track record of educating minority students, which will obviously have to change.

And as noted in the piece, the increase in minority births is vital to keep the nation from becoming too “top heavy”, with a disproportionate number of older Americans not in the workforce compared to younger Americans who are working.

In Georgia, over 70% of residents over 65 are non-Hispanic white, but less than 45% of children 5 and under are non-Hispanic white.

Obviously, this also has profound political implications: if the Republican Party does not attract larger numbers of minority supporters, it will face daunting odds in the future.

The decision to live alone is common in diverse cultures whenever it is economically feasible. Although Americans pride themselves on their self-reliance and culture of individualism, Germany, France and Britain have a greater proportion of one-person households than the United States, as does Japan. Three of the nations with the fastest-growing populations of single people — China, India and Brazil — are also among those with the fastest growing economies.

The mere thought of living alone once sparked anxiety, dread and visions of loneliness. But those images are dated. Now the most privileged people on earth use their resources to separate from one another, to buy privacy and personal space.

And this:

Compared with their married counterparts, single people are more likely to spend time with friends and neighbors, go to restaurants and attend art classes and lectures. There is much research suggesting that single people get out more — and not only the younger ones. Erin Cornwell, a sociologist at Cornell, analyzed results from the General Social Survey (which draws on a nationally representative sample of the United States population) from 2000 to 2008 and found that single people 35 and older were more likely than those who lived with a spouse or a romantic partner to spend a social evening with neighbors or friends.

The trend toward more single people in America — now 32 million — seem to be continuing. There’s a looming issue out there about aging and health care; as the op-ed notes, some unhealthy single people can become dangerously isolated. But for many of us living single seems like a great way to live — and we can socialize on our own terms whenever we want. With the number of single people increasing, there are even more like-minded potential friends who can meet up without worrying about a spouse or partner’s desires first.

It’s a fascinating op-ed about one of the most important demographic trends in the U.S.

Here’s a repeat of some of that post almost three months ago:

For lots more data and to look at individual Census tracts, go to this page at The Washington Post and type in a zip code or location. You can then select a variety of filters for 1990, 2000, and 2010 data.

My census tract doesn’t precisely overlap with neighborhood lines. My tract in 2010 had 1,149 people (47% black, 44.1% white). In 1990, that same tract had 1,715 people (97% black). That’s a dramatic shift, but our maps are dotted with such dramatic shifts of depopulation and of mixing of races. One west side tract, for example, was 83.9% non-Hispanic white in 1990, but as of 2010 was 57% Hispanic.

Here are four screen shots. The darker blue-green represents areas that are predominantly black; the darker red represents larger white populations. Note how the darkest colors have been diluted by increased diversity.

A larger view of the county in 1990:

That same view for 2010:

A little tighter view of Savannah in 1990:

Savannah in 2010:

Now the WSJ has a fascinating piece: Segregation Hits Historic Low; Flight From Rust Belt Cities, Immigration Boost Integration in Cities, Study Says

From that piece:

The report, released by the conservative Manhattan Institute, said U.S. cities are more integrated now than at any time since 1910, based on analysis of census data from neighborhoods.

Fifty years ago, nearly half the black population lived in a ghetto, the study said, while today that proportion has shrunk to 20%. All-white neighborhoods in U.S. cities are effectively extinct, according to the report.

Immigration and gentrification have helped convert ghettos into racially mixed communities and contributed to diversifying suburbia, said economists Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Jacob Vigdor of Duke University, who co-wrote the study. “Segregation is as low as we have ever seen it,” said Mr. Vigdor. “It’s an unprecedented scenario.”

The article notes concerns that the conclusions seem “too rosy” to some experts and that many links — like that of poverty and segregation — are still important.

But it’s still a fascinating piece for those of us interested in how our cities are changing.

Non-discrimination laws and political clout in cities meant that blacks were hired in large numbers for solid government jobs at the state and local level. Laws requiring minority participation in government construction projects boosted the black private sector.

I’m generalizing here, of course, but it’s also the case that many members of the black middle class are relatively new to it — maybe the family’s status goes back a generation, maybe two. That means that many lack the inherited wealth that many members of the white middle class have — or will eventually have.

The recession, the slow recovery, and cuts in local and state government spending have thus taken a terrible toll on the black middle class.

I have followed these trends to some degree, although I’ve never written about them, and they have come up in the national media previously. But they have received particular attention in the last few days, in part because of new Census data.

From NPR and All Things Considered, Black Atlantans Struggle To Stay In The Middle Class:

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that among recent borrowers, nearly 8 percent of both African-Americans and Latinos have lost their homes to foreclosure. (The rate for whites is 4.5 percent.) And losing a home is often a consequence of losing a job — as of Dec. 2, African-American unemployment is 15.5 percent, more than twice that of whites.

Nancy Flake Johnson, president of the Urban League of Greater Atlanta, says the bad economy has been devastating for all blacks, including college graduates.

“We’ve lost a third of the black middle class,” she says, citing a recent Urban League study.

From NPR:

From last month’s As Public Sector Sheds Jobs, Blacks Are Hit Hardest in the NYT:

Though the recession and continuing economic downturn have been devastating to the American middle class as a whole, the two and a half years since the declared end of the recession have been singularly harmful to middle-class blacks in terms of layoffs and unemployment, according to economists and recent government data. About one in five black workers have public-sector jobs, and African-American workers are one-third more likely than white ones to be employed in the public sector. [. . .]

Blacks have relied on government jobs in large numbers since at least Reconstruction, when the United States Postal Service hired freed slaves. The relationship continued through a century during which racial discrimination barred blacks from many private-sector jobs, and carried over into the 1960s when government was vastly expanded to provide more services, like bus lines to new suburbs, additional public hospitals and schools, and more.

But during the past year, while the private sector has added 1.6 million jobs, state and local governments have shed at least 142,000 positions, according to the Labor Department. Those losses are in addition to 200,000 public-sector jobs lost in 2010 and more than 500,000 since the start of the recession.

The Associated Press’ Census: Widening income gap as blacks leave cities tackles a different problem, as demographic shifts compound economic and cultural issues. The piece looks at the long-term trend of blacks moving back to the South — in some cases generations after their families left — and to suburbs:

Affluent black Americans who are leaving industrial cities for the suburbs and the South are shifting traditional lines between rich and poor, according to new census data. Their migration is widening the income gap between whites and the inner-city blacks who remain behind, while making blacks less monolithic as a group and subject to greater income disparities. [. . .]

The typical white person last year earned income roughly 1.7 times higher than that of blacks, the widest ratio since the 1990s. Census figures released Thursday show that cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Milwaukee in particular saw increases in inequality, hurt by an exodus of middle-class minorities while lower-skilled blacks stayed in the cities.

Low-income blacks also slipped further behind. The share of black households ranking among the poorest poor — those earning less than $15,000 — climbed from 20 percent to 26 percent over the past decade; other race and ethnic groups posted smaller increases. At the same time, African-Americans making $200,000 or more a year were unchanged from 2000 at about 1.1 percent, even after a deep recession.