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Posts Tagged ‘population growth’
Rural “Brain Gain”! It’s true
January 6th, 2010
A few weeks ago, Jennifer Gumbel, a Gen Y lawyer from Le Roy, MN commented on a Minnesota Public Radio forum that she thought her rural communities was experiencing “brain gain” rather than “brain drain.” In other words, young people are staying and moving into her community at a higher rate than those moving out. (see more on this here)
Well, it looks like her intuition was right. The University of Minnesota’s Extension Center for Community Vitality has produced a report titled “Rural Migration: The Brain Gain of Newcomers,” which support’s Gumbel’s claims.
Using a “simple cohort technique” to analyze population growth and decline, the study found that many rural Minnesota communities are experiencing an in-migration of adults in age cohorts of 35-49. Definitely a positive trend. And when these new residents move in, they often bring children, causing an increase over time in the class sizes in rural schools. This trend points out the importance for rural communities to develop “people attraction strategies” targeting young adults in their child rearing years.
The report doesn’t analyze why residents were attracted to these rural Minnesota counties, but it does offer analysis conducted by the University of Nebraska. This research of why people age 30-44 have moved to the Panhandle region suggests they do so because they want:
- a simpler way of life
- safer, more secure communities
- lower housing costs
I’m definitely over simplifying the analysis of the “Rural Migration: The Brain Gain of Newcomers” report, so I hope readers will dig in deeper. (BTW, I found it to be a very readable report.) I hope that someone will eventually study the specifics of why people are moving to these rural Minnesota communities and why they are not moving to others. I suspect employment plays a key role, but I doubt that it the only factor. The report has also left me hoping to discover current trends in rural South Dakota. Could we have a “brain gain” and not know it?
Tags: brain gain, Minnesota, people attraction strategy, population growth, University of Minnesota, university of nebraska
Posted in Community Development, Economic Development, Rural | Comments (2)