Why do people move where they do? It’s the kind of question many bright folks love to put in the pot, stir, and come up with an answer. Some will say it’s for the weather. Good schools are a popular idea. Creative people has it’s advocates. College towns offer both culture and sports programs with young bodies for toothless Lotharios.
Today we’ll look at population growth, per capita personal income, and its big brother, per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our focus is on just 22 of the 384 metro areas with significant colleges relative to their communities.
We’re looking at the places where a college or university has a significant role in social and economic life of the metro complex. However, there can’t be too much competition from other activities. Hence Austin, Boston, Lincoln, and Phoenix are not in our sample since each also offers the ruff and tumble entertainment of state legislatures.
The metro areas of the United States gained 91% of the population increase from 2003 to 2023. They had an average annual population increase of 0.82%, ahead of the nation’s 0.75% rate. Our non-scientific sample of 22 “college” metro areas had population growth at an annual rate of 0.78%, somewhat faster than the nation but not as fast as all metro areas.
The leaders in population growth rates among our 22 metros were College Station (Texas A&M) 1.82% average annual growth, followed by Iowa City (the University of Iowa) 1.34%, and Tuscaloosa (the University of Alabama) 1.25%.
The slowest growing college metros were Ithaca (Cornell University NY) at 0.22%, trailed by South Bend-Mishawaka (Notre Dame). Muncie (Ball State University) was the only “college” metro in our sample to lose population, declining at a 0.33% annual rate.
In per capita personal income, our 22 metros had a collective 3.78% growth behind all metros and the nation as a whole. The growth rate leaders were Charlottesville (VA), Missoula (MT) and Boulder (CO) each above 4.4%. They bested the nation and the national MSAs,. This indicates strong personal income growth that was not knocked down by their relatively high population growth.
Finally, six of our 22 MSAs (including our own Lafayette-W. Lafayette MSA) exceeded 4% growth in per capita GDP, the productivity of a population. The nation, its aggregation of MSAs and our collective of “college” MSAs fell short of that annualized growth rate.
In none of the topics above did our 22 “college” MSAs grow faster than the entirety of MSAs. Perhaps the rate of population growth is inverse to the size of the MSA. If that’s the useless secret, some consultant will write a book and make a small, temporary splash on the speaking circuit.