Young people are FLEEING!

[DBR96A]

Pittsburgh is DYING! Read this post from Chris Briem's blog, and notice the figures I have highlighted in red! As you can see, even though our subhuman elected officials can't, teenagers are voting with their feet, and FLEEING Pittsburgh in droves! It's a national embarrassment to be hemorrhaging teenagers as fast as we are! I mean, they're probably laughing at us on MTV right now! (Teenagers are "young people," right?)

correction

If you saw Brian O'neill's column today, I was going to be snarky and say that only in Pittsburgh is it considered unconventional to take a second to look up a few basic facts before acting on presumptions... but it turns out I should have taken more than a second myself to throw that number out there on city and county population change 2003-2005. I pulled the wrong numbers, but it turns out that the city is showing some significant increase in the population 20-34 compared to the remainder of the county. Makes it an even bigger question what this commission is doing. So for the sake of clarity. Here is the full table I pulled from the American Community Survey for those who want to check.

City of Pittsburgh

2003 2005 Change

Under 5 years 11,927 15,708 3,781 31.7%

5 to 9 years 12,561 15,231 2,670 21.3%

10 to 14 years 15,256 14,571 -685 -4.5%

15 to 19 years 17,939 15,053 -2,886 -16.1%

20 to 24 years 25,603 30,261 4,658 18.2%

25 to 34 years 36,958 38,744 1,786 4.8%

35 to 44 years 37,215 38,131 916 2.5%

45 to 54 years 43,339 44,732 1,393 3.2%

55 to 59 years 12,203 16,575 4,372 35.8%

60 to 64 years 13,827 13,937 110 0.8%

65 to 74 years 24,183 19,021 -5,162 -21.3%

75 to 84 years 18,698 17,259 -1,439 -7.7%

85 years and over 6,808 5,143 -1,665 -24.5%

Allegheny County

2003 2005 Change

Under 5 years 69,272 67,284 -1,988 -2.9%

5 to 9 years 70,494 70,298 -196 -0.3%

10 to 14 years 79,987 75,783 -4,204 -5.3%

15 to 19 years 72,063 72,394 331 0.5%

20 to 24 years 72,135 71,579 -556 -0.8%

25 to 34 years 145,628 133,990 -11,638 -8.0%

35 to 44 years 184,387 171,342 -13,045 -7.1%

45 to 54 years 193,557 197,034 3,477 1.8%

55 to 59 years 68,582 80,251 11,669 17.0%

60 to 64 years 62,473 58,548 -3,925 -6.3%

65 to 74 years 95,477 86,963 -8,514 -8.9%

75 to 84 years 80,891 85,159 4,268 5.3%

85 years and over 25,441 24,878 -563 -2.2%

Which if you net out the difference you get:

Allegheny County Net City of Pittsburgh

2003 2005 Change

Under 5 years 57,345 51,576 -5,769 -10.1%

5 to 9 years 57,933 55,067 -2,866 -4.9%

10 to 14 years 64,731 61,212 -3,519 -5.4%

15 to 19 years 54,124 57,341 3,217 5.9%

20 to 24 years 46,532 41,318 -5,214 -11.2%

25 to 34 years 108,670 95,246 -13,424 -12.4%

35 to 44 years 147,172 133,211 -13,961 -9.5%

45 to 54 years 150,218 152,302 2,084 1.4%

55 to 59 years 56,379 63,676 7,297 12.9%

60 to 64 years 48,646 44,611 -4,035 -8.3%

65 to 74 years 71,294 67,942 -3,352 -4.7%

75 to 84 years 62,193 67,900 5,707 9.2%

85 years and over 18,633 19,735 1,102 5.9%

All from the Census American Community Survey

BT.

For those who are adding up and wondering why these numbers do not match the census estimates that are also out there. There are a couple reasons, but one big one is that the ACS data is for now only those who are not in group quarters. Thus a lot of students in dorms, those who are incarcerated, in nursing homes and others wind up not included. So the ACS numbers will be lower than most other numbers for total population. Especially in the city proper with its concentration of all of those groups, the difference is quite large. But if the question is attracting or retaining people.. its not exactly the group quarters population you are looking at anyway. I mean, a quick way to increase population is to build a jail, but what does that buy you in the long run.

posted by C. Briem at Thursday, April 12, 2007 0 comments

[DBR96A]

I better post a follow-up, considering sarcasm and lampooning people have gotten me into trouble on here before.

[tooluther]

teenagers are voting with their feet, and FLEEING Pittsburgh in droves! It's a national embarrassment to be hemorrhaging teenagers as fast as we are! I mean, they're probably laughing at us on MTV right now! (Teenagers are "young people," right?)

[NewBurgh]

Agreed....

I wasn't quite sure whether this was a dumb post trying to be funny (with the MTV comment),

or a dumb post trying to sarcastically jab at other doom n' gloom posts,

or just a dumb post in a misinformed kind of way.

Either way it comes across to me as just that....pretty dumb.

[tooluther]

OH...oops

I didn't catch the sarcasm hahaha

[facilities man]

With few exceptions, young people 10-19 don't make decisions on where they are moving to. What this really points to, AGAIN, is how bad birth rates got when the bulk of child bearing people left in the 80's...its a negative echo boom.

[TheGerbil]

I caught the sarcasm, don't worry

It's very interesting to note the two youngest age brackets, by the way.

Under 5 years 11,927 15,708 3,781 31.7%

5 to 9 years 12,561 15,231 2,670 21.3%

Those are pretty good increases. I hope that points to the city's demographics being balanced out (finally). Also interesting that the only age brackets where we lost were teens and people over 65. And yet some people claim that everyone of childbearing age is moving to the suburbs. Doesn't look that way to me!

[NewBurgh]

I did catch the sarcasm, but I think I still reacted a bit too harshly to the post. It just caught me at a bad time...I read this post after yet another conversation that I had defending the city and trying to explain the numbers... that people really aren't fleeing the city in droves. People are so reluctant to actually read into the numbers that seeing yet another post about this issue really got to me. With all of the great things happening in the city, it seems like way too much time and energy is spent talking about the population decline and defending the city against ridiculous assertions by the doom n' gloom people and reactionary newspaper articles. Anyway...I apologize for my earlier post.

[blueblackcat]

I don't think it's such a dumb post. I thought it was pretty funny satire of how people at places like the Trib and Forbes use stats to make us look bad.

Pittsburgh:

20 to 24 years 25,603 30,261 4,658 18.2%

9% growth per year? Wow.

[Evergrey]

I would assume the decline of aged 10-19 year old residents in the city is related to real and perceived disparities in quality between Pittsburgh Public Schools and competing suburban districts. Enrollment at Pittsburgh Public Schools has been dwindling rapidly, and quality of education is a major push/pull factor for families. The anemic growth in the 25-54 segment is probably related to this, as this is the age group most likely to have children between age 10-19.

The rapid growth in 55-59 is probably partially due to the "empty nester" phenomenon... this age group seems to be rediscovering the urban lifestyle after raising their kids in Pine Township... snapping up downtown condos and restoring rowhouses in Lawrenceville.

The rapid increase in under-10 children is potentially due to a couple things... a) the back-to-the-city phenomenon... where young adults are attracted to the urban environment after generations of suburbia... b) parents are more willing to live in the city when children are preschool or elementary aged as opposed to high school aged due to real and perceived disparities in educational quality. Elementary schools are more numerous and neighborhood-serving as opposed to the high schools which feed from vast swaths of the city.

one final note... I read Briem religiously... but I have to admit I'm skeptical about these numbers... if those City population figures are correct... the City of Pittsburgh gained 7849 people between 2003 and 2005... despite overall negative trends for the county. While I would love for the city to gain population... and feel like the city is improving... I don't believe the Census Bureau would estimate the city experiencing a population increase. 2010 will give us some real numbers to chew on.