Demographics

We're Telling the Wrong Story About Race in America

buffalo-ny-downtown.jpg

It's been a week since a mentally ill racist murdered 10 people, most of them Black Americans, in a Buffalo supermarket. In the intervening days since this horrific tragedy  read more »

More Evidence That Young Americans Are Not Attracted to Dense Cities

urban-subway.jpg

As COVID-19 restrictions lift and cities attempt to stem the population and commercial losses they have sustained over the past two years, many urbanists are still banking that the historic, well-documented trend of young adults flocking to big cities  read more »

How the Boomers Robbed the Young of All Hope

alex-motoc-sAhHyQiQKT8-unsplash.jpg

"Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt." - Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1748.

The great test of a generation is whether it leaves better prospects for its descendants.  read more »

America's Two Housing Markets

america-2-housing-markets.png

Imagine that, on top of all our other problems, the United States had a shortage of pickup trucks. While many pickups are purchased for recreational purposes, they also play vital roles in construction, farming, forestry, and other industries.  read more »

Paying the Poorly Educated

metzgar-educationandjobs.png

Joe Biden was right to propose free Pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds and free community college in his initial legislative package, rather than pushing for free public university education and the cancellation of college debt.  read more »

America is Quietly Reinventing Itself

austin-downtown.jpg

The future shape of post-Covid America is beginning to emerge. As demographic trends and surveys indicate, the pandemic has helped accelerate large, epochal changes in the nation’s geography.  read more »

All Major Metropolitan Area Growth Outside Urban Core: Latest Year

NewJersey_suburbs_2019-12.jpg

The latest City Sector Model analysis of major metropolitan areas shows that dispersion accelerated in 2020 during the period covered by the American community survey 2020 five- year survey (2016 to 2020). The American Community Survey collects a five year sample that covers virtually all geographies in the United States. The new 2016-2020 sample has an “middle year” of 2018.

The City Sector Model  read more »

The Kids Are Not Alright and the Center is No Longer Holding

income-workers-vs-capital.jpg

Across the West, the young are losing faith in the future.

The recent French election provides a case study. In the first round vote, voters narrowly favored President Emmanuel Macron, the epitome of “enlightened” elite rule, over Marine Le Pen, the doyenne of French fascism.  read more »

The Working Classes Are a Volcano Waiting to Erupt

gilets-jaunes_protest-FR.jpg

Whatever the final outcome, the recent French elections have already revealed the comparative irrelevance of many elite concerns, from gender fluidity and racial injustice to the ever-present ‘climate catastrophe’. Instead, most voters in France and elsewhere are more concerned about soaring energy, food and housing costs.  read more »

Net Domestic Migration: Shift to From Larger Metros to Smaller Areas Accelerates

Riverside_skyline_.jpg

Late in the last decade, domestic migrants began moving to smaller metropolitan areas and micropolitan areas (CBSA’s) as domestic migration to the larger metropolitan areas fell. The trend was covered in “Domestic Migration to Dispersion Accelerates (Even Before Covid).” The trend has continued, especially in the year ended July 1, 2021, according to Census Bureau estimates.  read more »