The question used to be “where will we grow?”

by Tom Evslin

Nationwide our fertility rate is below replacement level. Without massive immigration, our population will shrink. The number of young children is already falling in much of the country. Aging Vermont gives us a preview of what a declining rather than expanding population means.

Almost 50 years ago Mary and I helped get a federal grant to build a new elementary school in Worcester, VT — a farm town evolving into a bedroom suburb of Montpelier. The town was growing with rapidly breeding young couples, including us. The old school was a wreck and too small. Today with the birth rate cratering and school-age population declining, the school is one of two in the district considered for closure. Of course, there is intense local opposition to closing it; but it probably should be shuttered for both educational and economic reasons. Closing it would definitely mean longer bus rides and make the town even less attractive to people with or planning children.

Similarly the rural hospitals in Vermont and elsewhere are under intense financial pressure. The first service to go is usually the birthing center for good demographic reasons. Copley Hospital in Morrisville, VT, closed theirs after 90 years of service because of financial losses. Not enough babies. That’s little consolation for those who are still having babies in the area and now have to drive considerably farther (Copley can still do emergency deliveries). The Board of Brattleboro (Vermont) Memorial Hospital approved a plan to wind down obstetric services to help alleviate the hospital’s huge operating losses. So far attempts to get extra funding from the state and/or town have failed. The nearest alternative services are out-of-state (although not very far away).

If one family moves out into the woods, are we obligated to build a school and a hospital near them? Obviously not. What if only a few families remain using a school and hospital that were built for local population high tide? Are we obligated to fund a tiny school and hospital forever? Can a tiny school or hospital be a good one? I’d say “no” to both – but we do have to think about both ways that towns can avoid terminal shrinkage and what happens to the families who are stranded when the town infrastructure recedes around them.

How does a town escape terminal shrinkage?

A shrinking population means fewer customers for stores, schools, hospitals, etc. in a town. As these organizations become uneconomic, they reduce services or disappear completely. Population declines because people move out and new people don’t move in. The spiral continues down unless somehow interrupted.

To stop the spiral —duh—a town needs to attract new people and retain most of the people it has. One way to become attractive is to host new facilities that no other town currently wants: a data center, for example, a quarry, a factory, or even a prison. It’s ironic that towns with prisons resist their closure but towns without them resist their opening. Yeah, there’ll be local opposition to the new facility from “stakeholders” who don’t want the facility next door and want to maintain the “character” of their town. Unless the stakeholders are willing to fund the school and the hospital and keep stores open at a loss, they should be ignored.

A town can become competitive by making it cheap and easy to build housing. Get rid of all exclusionary zoning. Don’t insist that farmland be preserved for cows that are never coming back. Make permitting cheap and easy and predictable. Get the damn “stakeholders” out of the permitting process as well. Encourage (but don’t subsidize) developers. If money can be found, don’t use it to prop up dying institutions; build town infrastructure like sewer, water, and roads which encourage private investment.

Excellent schools are attractive but very hard to achieve in small towns. Some places in Vermont work successfully around that limitation by using their school funds to pay tuition (with some limits) for whatever other public school or approved independent school parents choose. Teachers’ unions hate this. It works. State law should encourage it everywhere for better education and small-town survival.

What happens to the people when a town shrinks below viability?

As population recedes, some people will be left stranded in towns that can no longer offer adequate services. This may just be an inconvenience if the needed services are close enough and the town is otherwise attractive. Personal transportation is about to get both easier and cheaper because of self-driving cars and electrification. Hormuz aside, the long-term trend in fossil fuel prices is down, not up. Every hybrid or full electric on the road makes gasoline cheaper for everyone else. Lower battery prices mean cheaper electrics; we will either make them in the US or import them from places like China which already make them very inexpensively. Better batteries also mean better local grids and feasible use of renewables even in remote places with poor grid access. Whether or not the fiber-at-any-cost crowd wants to admit it, Starlink means good communication is available almost everywhere cheaply and immediately. Look for Starlink and competitors to make universal cell service practical soon.

Butwe’ve learned from the time of COVID that remote learning is educationally inferior. We’ve also learned that socializing in schools is a crucial part of growing up. Kids need to be able to get to some good school. People need to be able to get to hospitals while they’re still alive. People need a place to work. Some towns will not be viable except possibly for vacation homes and retreats for hermits. The people in those towns will have to move in order to give their families a good life.

There have been ghost towns almost since America was first settled. In some places the soil ran out quickly. Mines were exhausted. Towns built for railroad workers weren’t needed anymore. The dust bowl happened. Although these closures caused real hardship for real people, the safety valve was mobility. Americans moved not only because of overcrowding but also because the towns they lived in were no longer viable. We’ve lost our mobility! According to the Census Bureau, the number of people who move each year in the US has halved since 1980 and is still declining. We must have mobility so that people can escape towns with disappearing infrastructure and lack of opportunity.

One reason people are stuck where they are is two-income households. It is easier to get one new job than two in a new place. The other two major reasons for declining mobility are housing costs in places they might want to move to and welfare incentives to stay put. Both are addressable.

Buying and renting are both too expensive in many places largely because of exclusionary zoning and excessive permitting costs. Places like Austin, TX —which is a magnet for job seekers—have shown that rental costs actually decline with increasing population so long as housing can readily be built. This is a positive feedback loop. Reasonably priced housing attracts workers who attract employers who attract more workers who populate the schools and hospitals and shop in the stores and attract more housing developers. The villains are again the “stakeholders”, the people who believe they are protecting their own property values by making sure no one else can build. Stakeholders cannot be allowed either to keep towns in a death spiral or block new housing for those seeking opportunity. To some extent, government subsidies and mandates for “affordable” housing help drive up housing costs for everyone.

An incredible web of welfare benefits, most of which are administered locally, has both subsidized the cost of remaining jobless in place and also made it very difficult to move. Some people are too sick or in too much need of family assistance to move. Others, however, should move to places where there are jobs, good schools, and adequate health care. The goal of welfare for them should be to get them back as productive members of society SOMEWHERE in the US. We need them in the workforce. They need to be in the workforce. One-time relocation assistance is far preferable to perpetual dependence. But there must be someplace to move to.

We live in post-Malthusian times.

The problems of population shrinkage are different than those of constant growth, which we are used to thinking about. Growth may come again; meanwhile we must help people in towns stranded by the outgoing population tide.

The author, an author, entrepreneur, former Vermont state cabinet officer, lives in Stowe. He founded NG Advantage, a natural gas truck delivery company. This commentary is republished with permission from his blog, Fractals of Change.