Posted August 9, 200816 yr Expanding the post where I looked at in- and out-migration for Dayton, I decided to do the same for the core county for Cincinnati, then a quick look at regional trends. The data here is from a website hosted by the Charlotte Star-Telegram, and is based on changes of address in IRS tax returns from 2000-2005. So it’s an early decade look at migration steams, about 3 years old now. Note that these numbers measure people moving in and out, not natural increase or decrease due to births and deaths, so are not population estimates I look at net in- or out-migration for Hamilton County, the core county of the Cincinnati metro areas. The chart below summarizes migration in four categories: 1. Hamilton to elsewhere in the metro area (including counties in Indiana and Kentucky) 2. Hamilton to out-of-state by region There’s actually been net in-migration from the rest of Ohio, As one can see there has been a net out-migration from Hamilton County of about 50,000-60,000 for the six year period. The data doesn’t get any detailed than this, so I can’t say from where in Hamilton people have moved in the 2000-2005 time frame, just that was a net-move out of the county Re-slicing the pie to show the metro area by state, one can see the lions share of Hamilton County leavers leave for the Ohio side of the river. Looking at the metro area (MSA) numbers by county, showing the counties that got the most movers from Hamilton first, unexpectedly Butler comes out on top. And note the fairly hight ranking of an Indiana county. Revisitng the pie, showing out -of state, out-migration by region. As with Dayton, Florida gets its own category by virtue of the volume of out-migration there. But the rest of the South is pretty popular, too, actually equaling the out-migration to the western states (west coast and mountain west combined) And a list of where the out of state migrants moved to, by region and by state. The lines drawn on these charts show where there is a break in in- and out- migration.
August 9, 200816 yr Thanks though I imagine the second half of the decade will look quite a bit different - a lot of that is sprawl which is slowing down outside of Butler Cty. Indiana will be interesting as the new Honda plant may attract some folks along with those working the casino boats.
August 10, 200816 yr Thanks a lot for the data/information. This is very useful, and should be interesting to look at when the 2010 Census counts come out. Then we can start all of the re-examining and what not for the next 10 years. :-D
August 10, 200816 yr Well Ohio's obsession with tropical climates is instilled from a young age...on this clipping from this week's paper we have not one but two Florida-reinforcing things happening in one column: FLORIDA! FLORIDA! FLORIDA!
August 10, 200816 yr The Florida thing reminds me of Jimmy Buffett and his Cincy fanbase. Cincy is apparently Parrothead Central. I think its interesting how Dearborn County was getting more than Boone County KY, as that was supposed to be a big boom county (and you can see that as the sprawl has reached the I-75/I-71 split. I need to make a sunday drive out to Dearborn one of these weekends to see if any of this is visible...new subdivisions and construction and such. Isn't this the county that has Metamora in it?
August 10, 200816 yr Metamora is in Franklin county north of Dearborn. Dearborn has many subdivisions but they are scattered throughout the county with less development (commercially and Industrial) than NKY. Those numbers do kind of surprise me though because i would have never guessed it. SW Indiana has one major commercial corridor that stretches through the southern part of the county ie: Rt 50.
August 11, 200816 yr there is no more loathsome movement in American society than the Cult of Buffet... ughhhhhh
August 11, 200816 yr Jeff, fantastic data as always. Very interesting. It is ammo for a couple of my pet theories. 1. Cincinnati as an "isolate". The migration to/from the rest of the Midwest seems very low to me, though I suppose Cincy is a border region. What do other Midwest metros look like, I wonder? 2. My skepticism of mega-regional thinking. Thinking of how, say, Louisville, Cincy and Indianapolis could co-operate, it doesn't look like those regions have much "brain circulation" or whatever going on. They are proximate to each other, but don't seem to interact much demographically. Obviously, more research is needed to fully back that up, but I'm too lazy to click around the Star-Telegram's site and do it.
August 11, 200816 yr The direction of attendance at colleges and universities is significant. Cincinnatians either 1. stay home 2. go to a state school that you return to cincy after (BGSU, OU, Miami) 3. leave the state and rarely return 4. go to OSU and up the chances of staying in Cbus. Indy and Louisville don't capture very high numbers of college students from Cincy. NKU gets a fair number but that is really number 1 again.
August 11, 200816 yr Wonderful job! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
August 11, 200816 yr The direction of attendance at colleges and universities is significant. Cincinnatians either 1. stay home 2. go to a state school that you return to cincy after (BGSU, OU, Miami) 3. leave the state and rarely return 4. go to OSU and up the chances of staying in Cbus. I didn't break out the Ohio in/out-migration numbers but they bear out your hunch. The two counties that recieved the most net out-migration from Hamilton were Franklin and Delaware..metro Columbus.
August 11, 200816 yr Very interesting. It is ammo for a couple of my pet theories. 1. Cincinnati as an "isolate". The migration to/from the rest of the Midwest seems very low to me, though I suppose Cincy is a border region. What do other Midwest metros look like, I wonder? Hamilton County has its greatest exchange outside the MSA with the countys of the Dayton MSA. Probably 40%-50% of the Ohio net in-migration came from Dayton MSA, which is another indication of the interaction between the Cincy and Dayton areas. 2. My skepticism of mega-regional thinking. Thinking of how, say, Louisville, Cincy and Indianapolis could co-operate, it doesn't look like those regions have much "brain circulation" or whatever going on. They are proximate to each other, but don't seem to interact much demographically. I've run the numbers for Jefferson County, the core county of the Louisville MSA, and can say that this metro actually had a net in-migration from out-of-state. The top region is from the Midwest, believe it or not, with the top states being Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana (Chicago and Indianapolis look to be top contributors, and it might be Cincy for Ohio). So there is some interchange from the closest MSAs to Louisville (and then there is Chicago). It might be more usefull to look at volume of moves between MSAs rather than net moves for core counties? For MSA numbers I did do some summary in & out migration numbers for MSAs' just to see which areas are more or less attractive, looking at Toledo, Fort Wayne, Indy, Louisville, Lexington, Cincy, Dayton, and Columbus. I'm still looking at that. My curiosity is really piqued by this regional picture.
August 12, 200816 yr It seems that Dearborn County, Indiana has more of the large lot single family home type development rather than new subdivisions. "Move out to Indiana" is synonomous with "Move out into the country" in Western Hamilton County.
August 12, 200816 yr Jeff, I ran the numbers for the Cincy, Indy, and Louisville trio. For fun, I also added Columbus. It isn't perfect since I used the data from that web site rather than dork with the raw Census Bureau files (which I've been meaning to import into a database for, oh, about six months now). Only the top 150 counties are listed, but it is close enough. Here's what I got: Cincy-Indy To Indianapolis: 3407 To Cincinnati: 2902 Net Flow from Cincy to Indy: 505 Cincy-Louisville To Louisville: 2929 To Cincinnati: 2997 Net Flow from Louisville to Cincy: 68 Cincy-Columbus: To Columbus: 8693 To Cincinnati: 7501 Net Flow from Cincinnati to Columbus: 1192 Indy-Louisville To Louisville: 2022 To Indianapolis: 2530 Net Flow from Louisville to Indianapolis: 508 Indy-Columbus To Columbus: 1835 To Indianapolis: 2097 Net Flow from Columbus to Indianapolis: 262 Louisville-Columbus To Columbus: 783 To Louisville: 799 Net Flow from Columbus to Louisville: 16 It looks like pretty small circulation overall. The notable outlier is the Cincy-Columbus flow, which is significantly higher and perhaps shows the importance of in state relationships. The Louisville-Columbus flow is at the small end, but given the distance this is no surprise. Indianapolis appears to have a slight advantage from a migration standpoint. Louisville is in almost perfect balance with the Ohio MSA's. Cincy appears to be slightly losing people. I can email my spreadsheet I used for this to anyone who wants it.
August 12, 200816 yr By the way, those are all MSA to MSA figures. It looks like the cutoff to have data included is 10 people. Typically only the handful of largest counties (2 or 3) have any data for inter-MSA moves - the core county does pick up the bulk of it.
August 12, 200816 yr To be snarky - I'm not sure why anyone would need to move from Cbus to Indy as they are practically the same city - their demographic similarities are astounding. I'm not sure migration is the best judge - rather corporate and cultural connections are probably more signficant - good places to look include law firms - very local but increasingly regional - cultural organizations - the tie between the filson and cincinnati historical societies . . . those come quickly to mind.
August 12, 200816 yr dmerkow, I agree that Indy and Columbus are the closest thing to real twin cities in the Midwest. Very similar in a number of respects. The migration flows are pretty small. One possible source of it: people going to and from Ohio State. That's just a speculation. As for these other items, how would you propose modeling the connections? Locally you can do things like look at overlapping directorships, but how would you look across cities? I'm curious because I do believe this would be an interesting exercise.
August 12, 200816 yr I do think law firms is a good place to start. Banks are another good place to look. These are institutions that reveal the hinterlands (this used to be easier before massive growth, but I still think it works). I think what we are really looking for is a way to measure overlapping hinterlands (Cronon-style). I guess we need to find a way to measure how many people are doing semi-regular business travel between these cities. Not daily commuting, but rather once a week or month type trips to carry out business (the way the Scranton is part of the NYC region in the TV show The Office).
August 12, 200816 yr Probably 30 years ago now there was a book out called "Systems of Cities" which had essays about measuring linkages. One I recall used telephone traffic to measure how cities in the Pacific Northwest interrelated..the asssumption was that volume of traffic indicated a linkage (I vaguely recall this. Not sure if this was the exact point or method, just that the writer was using telecommunications traffic).
August 13, 200816 yr Well Ohio's obsession with tropical climates is instilled from a young age...on this clipping from this week's paper we have not one but two Florida-reinforcing things happening in one column: FLORIDA! FLORIDA! FLORIDA! LOL! That was really what I was trying to say in Jeffrey's Dayton out-migration thread. Remember the "Almost Florida Mobile Home Park" on Beavis and Butthead where Lolita and Tanqueray lived? B&B were set in Texas, but that mobile home park could really be a Miamisburg or Northridge thing. Jeffrey: as always, stellar job of data analysis and data crunching. Your statistics seem to point out something else I've intuitively discerned. Dayton has become the land of mandated no-opportunity with nothing but generally continually bad news about jobs and economic progress, and so most people with any ambition eventually leave the area. Cincinnati is sort of a self contained "island" of a metro area and has a decent job base. So it also makes sense that most migration out of Hamilton Co. is to the cornfield-based housing developments of adjacent counties where people stay local but get their HGTV style McHouse. People stay put around Cincinnati -there's "old" families there. People don't stay around Dayton for more than two or three generations anymore. Butler is more intensively suburbanized than Warren (for now) so it also makes sense that most movement is up there. I think that local civic pride plays into this, and it is in addition to the economic opportunity angle. Cincinnati metro residents are usually proud to call Greater Cincinnati home. Most people I grew up with in Dayton who were on a college/professional track spent a good deal of energy washing the Daytonianism off of themselves (well, I did, and I was pretty typical of the thinking.) So I think how people feel about each region - that it's basically a good place to live and to be associated with, or not - reflects clearly in these numbers.
August 13, 200816 yr The vast bulk of migrations are internal for every MSA I've looked at. For Cincy, total county level in-migration was 394,549, and 286,401 of them came from elsewhere in the metro area.
August 13, 200816 yr People don't stay around Dayton for more than two or three generations anymore. Easy come/easy go. Three generations ago they needed to staff those assembly lines, so big migrations into town. Now the jobs are gone, so the people are, too. Particularly the young adults, which bodes ill for demogaphic trends. I did two blog posts on this, how the younger generation is leaving Dayton, by taking a look at the young adult cohort from 1990 to 2000. I dont recall if I posted this at UO, though. I could if anyone is interested.
August 13, 200816 yr >I thought luaus were Hawaiian. Doesn't matter -- it's the same stupid paradise idea that's been alive in western culture for hundreds of years. Because if these people had actually met anyone whose grown up in Hawaii or a Caribbean island nation, they typically are itching to get the hell off because it's like living in a highly corrupt small town and there aren't many jobs outside of restaurants, hotels, driving the parasail boat, hair braiding, and selling tourists fake drugs. Florida is another matter, because people who grew up in Florida tend to be just plain weird. I attribute a lot of that to the lack of large, deeply-rooted families and institutions and the lack of real stuff in the landscape and dads and uncles who had real jobs.
August 13, 200816 yr Doesn't matter -- it's the same stupid paradise idea that's been alive in western culture for hundreds of years. Because if these people had actually met anyone whose grown up in Hawaii or a Caribbean island nation, they typically are itching to get the hell off because it's like living in a highly corrupt small town and there aren't many jobs outside of restaurants, hotels, driving the parasail boat, hair braiding, and selling tourists fake drugs. Florida is another matter, because people who grew up in Florida tend to be just plain weird. I attribute a lot of that to the lack of large, deeply-rooted families and institutions and the lack of real stuff in the landscape and dads and uncles who had real jobs. Amazing post.
August 13, 200816 yr I did two blog posts on this, how the younger generation is leaving Dayton, by taking a look at the young adult cohort from 1990 to 2000. I dont recall if I posted this at UO, though. I could if anyone is interested. I am. Please post this, or post the link here if you did so already. I make the following claim: it's probably just about impossible (or highly unlikely) for a person in a creative or technical field to graduate from college and to start and have a good career based in the Miami Valley. And that has to rot the local fabric. I had a younger friend who graduated from WSU with a mechanical engineering degree around 1990, and the local summer jobs he could get weren't appropriate internships, they were working at landscaping companies and blue collar stuff. He moved to CO because he couldn't find *any* entry level job in the area after he graduated. I got the impression from him that this pattern was very common - his classmates left the area, too. I also don't know one person in the area in my own field (IT) besides myself, in my age bracket, who isn't a basket case. Dayton is an exceptionally hard area to be middle class in - socially as well as economically. Rich or company owner, no problem, it's cheap here. Redneck low class, there's lots of "options" and someone will always want to rumble with you. In between is very uncomfortable. It's also an exceptionally "cliquey" area - people are tight with whomever they know and extremely suspicious of newcomers and people outside their small circle of acquaintances.
August 13, 200816 yr How does Wright-Pat fit into the culture of Dayton? My opinion - at the local worker end, it's about the only reliable large employer left in the region. At the upper end, it's a professional enclave that doesn't mix much with the area - another clique. An engineer who isn't in the middle of DoD stuff already with a clearance and a bunch of contacts will have a tough time getting into the AFB contract firms that surround the base. When I interviewed at different places up there like CSC (I had a clearance a few years before) it felt like a cattle call and like I was wasting my time. A few military people settle down in the area but basically they're transient. And, sorry to everyone for hijacking this thread. The comparisons between Cincinnati and Dayton are always compelling to make. I'd sum it up like this: Cincinnati is "open for business." Dayton says it is, but really isn't, when you look at opportunities for non business owners to better themselves. By "non business owners" I mean the general public (you know, that vermin that we should outsource ASAP :whip: ) that actually drives a local economy.
August 13, 200816 yr Amazing post. Indeed! And, sorry to everyone for hijacking this thread. I guess since Dayton is going to become part of the Cicny metro area in the near future it really isn't hijacking...Dayton discussions could be Cincy discussions and vice versa, particulary ones like this.
August 13, 200816 yr How does Wright-Pat fit into the culture of Dayton? It makes the place more conservative. I see them as a subculture of Christian technofacists. Or, if that is too wierd, Cigarette Man from the X Files works there. For folks like us who value urbanism, city life, openess and tolerance, having a place like the base in ones backyard is a negative cultural inlfuence, even if it does pump beaucoup $$$ into the economy.
August 13, 200816 yr I make the following claim: it's probably just about impossible (or highly unlikely) for a person in a creative or technical field to graduate from college and to start and have a good career based in the Miami Valley. The County Business Patterns time series that I use, from 1998 thru 2006, shows an increase in these two sectors, for private sector employment: Information Professional, Science, Technical, and Engineering. The question is if there are more people looking then there are openings.
August 14, 200816 yr Excellent! That Cincy/Cols exchange is prettty impresive, but the net numbers are pretty low, true.
August 14, 200816 yr I see them as a subculture of Christian technofacists. Or, if that is too wierd, Cigarette Man from the X Files works there. For folks like us who value urbanism, city life, openess and tolerance, having a place like the base in ones backyard is a negative cultural inlfuence, even if it does pump beaucoup $$$ into the economy. Rotflmao! Well, I was restrained in my opinion but that cuts to the core of it. Like I said, as an IT person in the private sector, for me the base is a vast and irrelevant area of non-opportunity, closed doors, and cliques. I have had experience interviewing with a few base contractors and working for one. (One place was started by refugees from another - they basically took over/stole contracts when the former place went under.) The place I worked for was absurdly "techno-fascist" - managers would scheme over which engineer they would screw over or "rein in". They were developing avionics systems and nobody in the entire building had ever used or had any experience with C++ (this was 2002.) It was just incredibly backward for a self congratulating "advanced technology vendor". A few years ago I joined a Toastmaster's club populated by guys who worked at several base contractors and were ex-AF guys. Another freaking mutual admiration society, they should have just gotten a room together. :evil:
August 14, 200816 yr Since you were a part of that scene, here's a few Wright-Patterson posts from my blog. My informed opinion, but read them and tell me if I am off the mark or not Technology Transfer and Spin Offs Economic Development by Act of Congress Defense Edge City
August 14, 200816 yr How does the Cincy/Cleveland interchange compare to nearby out-of-state metros like Louisville and Indy?
August 14, 200816 yr Evergrey, it is easy enough to calculate this for yourself using the web site data that Jefferey linked to. I can even make it easier on you by sending the spreadsheet template for this complete with Cincy migration data and pivot tables. All you need to do is add Cleveland. PM me your email address and I'm happy to shoot it your way - if you agree to post the results here so the rest of us can share. One of these days I'm going to get around to databasing the raw data files so I can crank this out at will.
August 14, 200816 yr I'm kinda waiting for the mods to split this Dayton specific tangent off to its own thread. My whole point is that the AFB is a closed system. It benefits certain entities and certain people, and few others. In general, the biggest direct spinoff you see from the base that directly benefits the local economy is employment and personal taxes. The problem with USAF technology is that most of it is classified; and when military technology does spin off to the civilian sector, it is usually non-localized and it benefits all of the US, or the world, not just the local region. A "new teflon" or a "new velcro" just isn't going to be dropped into the evirons of Dayton to commercialize. The high tech scene in Ohio (outside the base and some specific companies) is third rate bush league - there are places with much better entrepreneurial cultures to take advantage of new tech than the Dayton or Cinci regions. IOW, why should some lucrative new advance be hobbled by the lack of really good systems engineers or programmers or competent technical managements in the Dayton area? That stuff will go to either coast. There really aren't any "world class" IT or high tech product development organizations in SW Ohio that provide a stable employment situation to produce those engineer who could help leverage the military technology locally. So this is a chicken and egg problem. One exception to all this: the base does fuel growth at the WSU and UD schools of engineering. So those kids graduate, find that the opportunities are restricted for them in the Dayton area, and move out to Silicon Valley or Austin. I think there's actually an oversupply and underutilization of engineering talent in the Dayton area. It's not a good place to be one of the herd of engineers. Anecdotally, I interviewed with the base when I graduated in the early 80s. The only "engineering" jobs available at the base seemed to be in contract administration, aka paper pushing. Even back then, the base imported or bought expertise from contractors. Specific reactions: Technology Transfer and Spin Offs See my rant above. In short, few local spinoffs to speak of, except well paid and cossetted insiders who work with the AFB on contracts. And the educational establishment. You mention Lexis-Nexis. It is always cited as a technology crown jewel of the region. OK, it had its day. Now to put things in their proper perspective - and this cuts to the heart of the backward local business culture issue - L-N owned the LARGEST online information databases in the world, *years* in advance of the world wide web, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Now - WHY ON EARTH did a couple of Stanford graduates put up a minimal and trivial hand written home page and wind up *owning* the web in the late 90s (Yahoo)? Lexis/Nexis had assets that it did NOTHING with until very late in the game, and it was in a PRIME position to capitalize on the web with its information assets. Lexis/Nexis should have OWNED the internet. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Essentially L/N was hidebound by a bureaucratic management structure that was inherited from places like NCR where many of its managers came from. Economic Development by Act of Congress >> And new locally-based entrants could go after the defense work. See my past post. They can't. They aren't qualified because they don't know anyone who can steer work to them, even if they can *do* the work. It's a closed system. One wrinkle to doing classified contract work that these papers don't explicitly mention is that in order to obtain contract work, you need a security clearance, and in general, the contractor organization has to pay for the clearance. An ordinary secret clearance used to cost at least $10K the last time I heard. And the company that is the "trustee" of the clearance has to have premises that have certain security measures in place, including things like TEMPEST radio frequency shielding. Basically, it's certainly not a mom and pop accessible thing, even for fairly light duty contract work. Most of these contracting companies try to steal each other's cleared employees so they don't have to fund someone's secret clearance application process (once a person has a clearance, they can move to a different contractor and the clearance is transferred for minimal cost.) >> Is this cluster moving beyond defense work, competing in the private sector? Obvious answer - I've never seen it. Most companies performing defense contract work (I have worked in several) have NO clue how to commercialize their technology. It's an aspect of that "technofascist" mentality. Their managements and employees really don't understand free market competition. This is not just a Dayton thing, it is true of all defense contractors. IE, don't expect to see Grumman or Boeing selling PCs or air conditioners. Defense Edge City Pretty much true. Without WPAFB you wouldn't have the entire I-675 corridor and Beavercreek would be rural. Not much to dispute there. My summary is that much of Dayton's current physical size and extent and suburban growth is due to the base. And that has benefited real estate construction, and retail, and service industries. Outside of that - if you wanted, say, to start a new (and viable) dot com or software product company - you really could not look to the local region or the base to support your effort with innovative engineers, competent and experienced managers, or a strong high tech network. WPAFB is a "parallel universe" alongside the civilian remainder of the Miami Valley.
August 14, 200816 yr Some of this is probably cyclical, because Cincinnati (and UC in particular) had a big boom/bust with aerospace engineering in the late 80s. During the last Cold War run-up GE and UC expanded mightily and then went through ten plus years of pretty much continual lay-offs which hurt a lot of engineers. The laid-off GE engineer was the classic symbol of the 90-91 recession hitting the middle class in Cincinnati. It is surprising how poorly engineers generally perceive the quality of the engineering market in Ohio, even though we have one of the largest set of engineering programs in the country. (don't know, but is the problem that they are crappy or just not big enough?)
August 14, 200816 yr The laid-off GE engineer was the classic symbol of the 90-91 recession hitting the middle class in Cincinnati. "Falling Down" could have been filmed in spots here. It is surprising how poorly engineers generally perceive the quality of the engineering market in Ohio, even though we have one of the largest set of engineering programs in the country. (don't know, but is the problem that they are crappy or just not big enough?) It *is* a poor market. What I observed when I was in college here 30+ years ago was that technical people here seem to be considered dime-a-dozen and being an engineer or programmer around here has been considered a loser & nerd track for as long as I can remember. I grew up here, graduated and moved out, moved around the country in the 80s, and moved back for personal reasons in the late 80s. All I can do is contrast how engineering job candidates and working engineers (and other "creative" technical types like programmers) are treated and regarded in this region compared to other areas. You never, ever see new product development roles around here in Ohio. It's almost always insurance or business application stuff for end users. For all the hype the local chambers give to their vaunted success stories, most of the "opportunity" here is in areas like technology services bodyshops that rent people out for hourly $. I believe that there has always been a tremendous glut of technical talent and "program/design for fun" types in this region. Probably due to the large number of technical programs in the region: all of the engineering schools, plus the 2 year technical institutes, and also a fair number of technically capable base personnel who settle here when they leave the military. I think the glut of engineers here nominally on the market cheapens our image.
August 14, 200816 yr Quote from: Jeffrey on August 12, 2008, 11:10:02 PM I did two blog posts on this, how the younger generation is leaving Dayton, by taking a look at the young adult cohort from 1990 to 2000. I dont recall if I posted this at UO, though. I could if anyone is interested. I am. Please post this, or post the link here if you did so already. Rather than link I will do this as a UO post, probably Friday night.
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