Re: shrinking Latah county?

["Priscilla Salant" <psalant@moscow.com>]

Thanks to Steve Cooke for reporting on the latest Latah County population
numbers.  I’ll bet I’m not alone in being surprised about the estimated
drop in our population, but I’d like to suggest that these numbers be
interpreted carefully.  In between the census years, when everyone is
actually counted (in theory at least),  Federal and state agencies work
together to estimate population change in counties, cities, and towns.  (So
the numbers Steve reported to the list were estimates, rather than actual
counts.)  And the further we get from the census years, the less certain we
are of the estimates because our benchmark year is increasingly distant. 
We won’t know until Spring 2001 what our actual population is, based on the
2000 census.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to put Latah County estimates in national
and regional perspective.  Here is how USDA recently described population
trends in rural counties around the country: “From 1995 to 1997, population
growth in nonmetro American fell from its pace of the preceding two years
... yet rural and small-town areas continued to see some net in-movement of
people . . . The pace of rural and small-town change in the West continues
to far outstrip that in other regions, with 15-percent growth since 1990, a
rate triple that of the rest of the country.  Growth, supported by
extensive in-migration, has been almost universal from the Rocky Mountain
Front Range to the Pacific coast.”

Some people will remember the report, “Why is Moscow Growing?,”
commissioned by the Moscow City Council and written by Jon Miller and
Steven Peterson of  the University of Idaho's Department of Economics. 
They concluded that Moscow grew at “only” 1.6 percent per year from 1990 to
1992, even though conventional wisdom had us growing more quickly.  Housing
starts, traffic counts, and water consumption all suggested the rate of
increase was larger.

Perhaps it’s time for city and county governments on the Palouse to look at
these questions in more detail.  Can we make any additional estimates about
what’s happening before we get the new census numbers?  What about the
other indicators of change, such as housing starts and traffic counts?

--Priscilla Salant