The message in population movements.

• Author: Barkey, Patrick M.
• Position: Indiana Indicators - Population growth spectrum

"People," the expression goes, "vote with their feet." And if the interim estimates of 2002 population in Indiana's 92 counties are any guide, those ballots are being cast all around us every day. The tallies of population shifts reveal winners and losers in stark terms, reminding us all of an unpleasant but unrelenting fact. That is that economic opportunities are not distributed evenly throughout Indiana.

Some 78,583 more people showed up within the borders of our state in 2002 than were counted in the decennial census in 2000, but almost 60 percent of that increase is accounted for just by the seven counties that share a border with Indianapolis. Paced by fast growth in Hamilton and Hendricks counties these areas at the fringe of our largest city get a double boost when it comes to population growth.

Of course, these counties attract a disproportionately large share of new residents, who either relocate from within the metro area, or who migrate to central Indiana from elsewhere in the state or country. But the very fact that they contain so many new arrivals gives them a second boost. Since people who move tend to be younger, these counties have an even larger population edge in families of child-bearing age. Hamilton County, for example, had more than three times as many births as deaths in the last two years, a ratio that far outpaces any other Indiana county.

The picture at the other end of the population growth spectrum is a lot less cheery. More than a quarter of Indiana's counties are estimated to have lost population in the last two years, with the biggest losers concentrated in two parts of the state. The first roughly coincides with the three counties of the Terre Haute metro area, which had about 1,500 fewer people in 2002 compared with 2000.

But the east-central part of the state has fared even worse. This cluster of counties--stretching from Rush County to the south up to Wabash County in the north and including the cities of Marion Anderson, Muncie, Richmond and Rushville--has lost almost 6,000 people in the last two years.

It would be nice if we could blame these downturns on the recession, but the data say otherwise. It represents a continuation of an unfortunate trend that began in 1979, and has resulted in a broad expanse of the...