As Indiana’s big cities are growing because young adults are moving in, Clinton County has lost more than 400 people since the 2010 census, including about 200 last year.
This comes as local business and governmental leaders have been working to bring more residents into the county.
That includes both efforts to increase and improve the housing stock, as well as campaigns to convince Clinton County workers who live elsewhere to move here.
U.S. Census Bureau estimates for 2014 – released Thursday - show 32,776 people living in the county, compared to 33,224 residents in the 2010 Census. The county lost about 200 people between 2013 and 2014, according to Clinton County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Shan Sheridan.
This appears to reflect both a statewide and nationwide trend.
Sheridan said he has talked to people at Gallup, the polling organization, and they continue to see rural areas lose people.
“All of their numbers and statistics show that rural communities are trending in the red,” he said. “Metropolitan areas and suburbia is where most of the millennials seem to be going.”
According to Matt Kinghorn, demographer at IU’s Indiana Business Research, Indiana’s big cities are growing because young adults are moving in and because of the lingering effect of the Great Recession that stanched the flow of people to the suburbs, but many areas in the rest of the state are either holding steady or losing population.
Indiana’s population overall grew by 1.6 percent from 2010 to 2014, reaching nearly 6.6 million people. Indiana ranked 32nd nationwide in growth, a rate faster than neighboring states. Kentucky grew by 1.5 percent, Ohio by 0.5 percent and Michigan and Illinois by 0.3 percent. North Dakota grew the fastest at 9.7 percent, while Vermont was last at 0.1 percent
Kinghorn said the millennial generation — those born roughly between 1980 and the mid-2000s — were a big reason for the population growth in big cities.
“As that group becomes an economic force, I think that could alter some of the housing and migration trends. I think you’re seeing that in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, where you’re seeing a lot of downtown apartment construction,” he said.
Overall, 13 of Indiana’s 20 largest cities and towns had population increases and suburbs around Indianapolis continued to grow, although many by not by as much as in previous years. Gary and Hammond, two cities in northwest Indiana southeast of Chicago, each lost an estimated 600 residents.
“The urban and suburban stories are closely linked,” Kinghorn said. “I think it’s really a stubborn effect of the Great Recession. It started back in 2008 or so. We saw the urban-suburban flow of residents slow down a lot.”
Many other areas outside the big cities and suburban areas showed losses, which Kinghorn called a continuation of a long-term trend.
“It’s driven by industrial decline and there aren’t the strong magnets to hold those people in those communities or attract new people to the communities,” Kinghorn said.
Sheridan said it boils down to competition for minds and bodies.
“That’s something that we’ve just got to be able to figure out,” he said. “We have to understand that for us to grow, we have to be able to target and reach that younger demographic.”
He said the key will be jobs and amenities.
“I think we’ve done fairly well on jobs,” he said. “The jobs are there, we have some of the lowest unemployment numbers we’ve seen in years. The problem is they don’t live here.”
The bureau also reports county residents had a median household income of $48,953, with 13.9 percent of the population living below the poverty level. It also showed 84.7 percent of the population with a high school education or higher, and 15.7 percent of the population is uninsured.
There are also 13,287 housing units and 2,280 businesses in the county.
Tom Coyne of the Associated Press provided information for this story.