Erik Larson wrote:
I provided a more detailed analysis of this just a week-and-a-half ago that demonstrated either that (a) the "population decline" is either due to the flight non-college educated and non-white populations from Minneapolis or (b) bad estimates. (For those who did not read the previous post, please note that conclusion (b) is far more plausible.)
Population changes in Minneapolis have been linked to a much different factor over the last 50 years, namely the size of households. When Minneapolis had a population of over 500,000, families were much larger. I don't have household size for 1950 handy although I am remembering it in the 4+ persons per household as opposed to the 2.25 persons today.
This makes sense when you think that the number of housing units has remained remarkably stable over the last 50 years while there has never been nor is there now a huge number of vacant properties. So it has to be the number of people in those houses that has changed. Now there are some immigrant groups which have traditionally had larger families and this has been the source of the marginal change in population in Minneapolis. But it is really not either of the reason cited above.
My little bungalow shows this trend. I talked to the guy whose family owned my house in the 1950's raising five kids and having grandma in my four bedroom house (it was two bedrooms at the time with a conversion attic.) I live alone in it today.
I would also caution people about trying to read tea leaves from a +1% or a -1% change in population estimates. I know some of the folks who do these estimates and they are fine people but they are not gods. Not even demi-gods. When the 2000 census came out, there was some fairly substantial adjustments in estimates to bring them in line with what reality showed. That isn't bad estimating, it is just the reality of estimating. Reality is often quite surprising.
Carol Becker Longfellow
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