A dozen years after coming out with The Clustering of America, Michael Weiss published The Clustered World, in 2000. This incorporated census data from 1990, which moved the analysis 10 years forward, but still leaves it well out of date as of 2017.
There was a movement to outlying locales that Weiss described as “repopulating rural America,” which struck me as a questionable description. I wonder if instead it represented metro areas spreading out into “edge cities.”
There was a rise in the Hispanic population, and Weiss claimed that this population was showing signs of wanting to stick together, rather than to assimilate into the rest of the country. He also saw an increase in isolation of the African-American population, which is the opposite of what one would have extrapolated based on prior trends toward integration.
Weiss used a survey of journalists to find that they lived predominantly in a few clusters toward the upper end of the income and status scale. It was already clear to him that they would have difficulty relating to people in middle-class and poor clusters.
Writing in 2000 and looking ahead, Weiss foresaw a continued increase in growth in far suburbs. Also, he made the straightforward projection that the Baby Boom generation would be headed toward a lifestyle characterized by retirement. With aging in general, he expected to see new clusters emerging with the age 55-75 bloc, as well as a cluster of people over 85 and ensconced in assisted living facilities.
He thought that there would be a distinctive Asian cluster, but my impression is that this has not developed. If I am correct about that, then the explanation is pretty simple. The “Asian” category is too broad, encompassing mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis, and so on. These disparate nationalities do not all naturally congregate with one another. Instead, one is likely to find them dissolved into the rest of the U.S. population.
I would be curious to see what clusters would show up today. I assume that Charles Murray’s Coming Apart story means that we would see clusters that differ dramatically by marital status. We would see households with two married adults in relatively large numbers in affluent zip codes, and we would see single parents prevalent in poor zip codes.
I speculate that we would see a decline in the share of employment in the for-profit sector and an increase in employment in non-profits. This is based in part on the growth of the New Commanding Heights of education and health care. Also, I am guessing that the super-rich are inclined to fund non-profits, so that the size of that sector goes up as more wealth accrues to the super-rich. I do not know how significant a trend this is, or how well it can be measured.
I speculate that we would see an increase in the urban-rural divide. That is, compare average incomes in zip codes where most households are within, say, 25 miles of a major city (one of the top 20, say) with zip codes where most households are more than 50 miles from a major city.
I speculate that differences in average levels of education across zip codes now are even more predictive of income differences than they were twenty years ago.
I speculate that we would see little progress in integration of African-Americans and Hispanics. They would continue to appear in their own distinctive clusters more often than mixed in with clusters of non-Hispanic whites.
re repopulating rural America: there were sequential effects for operational costs of small business formation (retail and restaurant) that caused baby boomers to move ever further out, in search of affordable rents to lower the risks of business investment. The process did start close in to cities in desirable suburbs (and “quaint” towns), and escalated, once baby boomers lost more office jobs to automation.
There was also a wave of buyouts in unionized industries in the early ’90s that fueled rural growth. Those people have died out or moved on, for the most part, and the financial opportunity no longer exists.
re repopulating rural America:
Some people move out of metro areas, or highly urbanized areas, to amenity rich areas for
1. “back to the land” and more rural living (sometimes related to agriculture, sometimes not)
and /or
2. tourism (amenity rich areas often draw tourists)
and / or
3. escape from big city life (crime, thin networks of social trust, crazy real-estate prices, crummy schools that can’t be fixed because of demographics).
= – = – = – = – = – = – =
1. In New York State, you see it in places like the Finger Lakes, driven in part by boutique winery boom, tourism, nearness of cities such as Ithaca with Cornell University. Rugged, poorly developed zones of New York State (Southern Tier, North Country) are less attractive to the average person, but the Finger Lakes area is charming, or might be.
2. Offhand the “driftless zone” of NW Wisconsin / SE Minnesota comes to mind. Pretty hills, halfway between Chicago and Twin Cities. This reminds me that much of rural Iowa is not perceived as amenity rich, but large parts of Minnesota, in contrast, score high on amenities. And if you are a native Minnesotan, you are accustomed to the weather.
3. In the Southwest, I would like to see disaggregated data on people (especially phenotypically white, English-as-first-language, native-born Americans) leaving greater Los Angeles for various places past the California state line but within 1000 miles of Los Angeles. I believe the cultural aspect of this was discussed in Peter Brimelow’s valuable polemic, _Alien nation_. The factors driving it are cultural and economic.
4. I wonder about how we can conceive of urban and rural. The MSA construct is imperfect. What many people want is drivability for periodic access to a large-enough city, but not being too close. For some people I think that means a two hour drive to a big enough airport and well-regarded hospital / clinic.
There was a movement to outlying locales that Weiss described as “repopulating rural America,” which struck me as a questionable description.
Well that did not happen and it the depopulation of rural America will probably continue in the near future. In reality, very unpopulated rural America (Mountain and grain farms) still appears to be doing relatively well but it is the somewhat rural/small towns are the depopulation. (Basically the town like Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life.)
I speculate that we would see little progress in integration of African-Americans and Hispanics.
How do you know? I believe the opposite here especially the Hispanic-Americans are reaching third+ generations (when assimilation occurs) and really dominate the working class jobs in the Southwest US border states. (Also the isolation of African-Americans in Southwest is diminishing as well but I don’t know if this spreads.) With increased urbanization of the well-off, there will still be lots of working class jobs in the city and young working class in the city with family connections will be advantage over working class whites moving in.
We would see households with two married adults in relatively large numbers in affluent zip codes, and we would see single parents prevalent in poor zip codes.
I still say two married adults are the ones smart enough to wait until they are 30 to get married so the conservative idea of just getting poor people married will fix things has a lot of issues with it.
The poor have kids whether they are married or not. Certainly the former is better then the latter.
Educated people delaying (often in perpetuity) marriage has resulted in very low fertility amongst them, at least the progressive ones. Liberals high IQs have less then one child per women, and this is a pattern that exists across the OECD.
They never get divorced because they never get married. Or they get married in their thirties and produce one child for two people. That’s a recipe for losing 50% of your best genes every generation.
People say that liberal UMC simply need to preach what they practice…but if what they practice is not getting married and not having kids that isn’t really a solution.
People say that liberal UMC simply need to preach what they practice…but if what they practice is not getting married and not having kids that isn’t really a solution.
Why not? The age of marriage is pushed out as most of these progressive UMC are getting married after their careers is settled which is now 28 – 30 years old. That is the practice and preaching although I think conservative pundits wish it differently. (The age of marriage has consistently gone up since 1960.) And realize the big rise in divorce in 1970s was from educated well off couples, like Charles Murray, not poor ones. Also the number of children from Hispanic- & African- has dropped dramatically since the Great Recession although higher than Asian- & White Americans.
https://www.unomaha.edu/news/2015/01/fertility.php
Isnt this true for all developed nations in the Far East and Europe? In fact include South America as the two most ‘developed’ nations, Brazil and Chile, have low birth rates and even India is at replacement level fertility rates. At this point, if it not for the African continent the world would probably be below replacement level today. (African rates are falling but still high.)
In terms of family formation, please name a well run developed nation outside of Israel that has a high birth rate? (Israel in the middle of a sort of Cold War and truly has a demographic concern.) I don’t see otherwise.
Frankly, I think people are reacting to economic incentives here that:
1) It is taking longer for people to settle and feel comfortable with family formation.
2) The marginal cost of children is high and increasing.
3) The value of semi-skilled labor is diminishing
4) Therefore, this will constrain labor supply in the 20 years in future and immigration can only fill certain holes in the market. Looking back at the last 40 years, the one era of increasing wages (1994 -2000) all happened 20 -25 years after the 1970s baby bust. (We seeing a smaller version of this with the lower 1990s birth rates.)
Losing a large portion of your smart people every generation and going through dysgenics is bad. It means inevitable societal collapse.
The west today is largely a function of the opposite happening (most of 1000-1900 AD featured high IQ bourgeois families having higher surviving TFR).
Finally, it does seem that the smart people themselves regret this fact of life (desired fertility is higher then realized). I think there is a kind of market/cultural failure going on. It’s bad for the commons and bad for the individuals, who can only maximize their welfare within the circumstances presented to them. I think progressive ideology is a big culprit, since it has a fertility dampening effect across the OECD (whatever the overall TFR in the country, and fertility of high IQ progressives is always lower then high IQ conservatives).
Of course isn’t there the Flynn Effect that IQ scores are increasing as a population? So this fear of Idiocracy is not really coming true. And aren’t most social issues improved from 1990? I lived through the Rodney King riots and literally nobody saw the huge crime drops for the next 25 years. (And Compton has lots of African- & Hispanic-American assimilation!) And note the IQ scores of African- and Hispanic-Americans are closer to 92/93 versus 85/100 so I think the environment changes are significant here.
I think there is a kind of market/cultural failure going on.
It seems like the highest IQ nations are the ones have the least children so why is this a market failure? This decline of family formation is happening because of natural capitalism!
I read somewhere that by 2040, 70% of Americans will live in 15 states (and be represented by 30 senators) while 30% of Americans will live in 35 states (and be represented by 70 senators).
You can see it is trending that way already if you look at maps of GDP, or exports. That’s where the higher paying jobs are.
Japan is shrinking. But their standard of living is actually getting better. Is their IQ going down? I don’t think so. I’ll have to look that up.
As you might have noticed, Japan takes in virtually no immigrants – not even from planetary garden spots like Syria, Pakistan and Somalia. What could they be thinking?