Birth dearth (again)

(This is one of several planned blog entries looking at West Virginia's past and future from a statistical point of view.).

About five years ago, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health wanted to know what happened to all the people who should be living in West Virginia. Had the state not suffered a massive outmigration from 1950-2000, there would be about 600,000 more people living here now than there are, based on the number of births and deaths in those 50 years.

West Virginia's population is about 1.8 million. An increase of 600,000 -- more accurately, not having lost 600,000 to migration -- would be a jumpt of 33 percent in the state's population.

The BPH broke those numbers down by county. Cabell County had a natural increae (births minus deaths) of 28,659 in that time. Yet the population between the censuses actually went down. Based on that, the BPH figured Cabell County had lost 39,910 people to migration between 1950 and 2000.

Wayne County lost 10,293 to migration.

Let's take a moment and look at some other numbers and spin things forward. There are some really good stats on the BPH Web site. They will probably keep me going for a long time. But let's take one minute and look at birth rates. In particular, birth rates in major cities.

Huntington's birth rate per 1,000 population in 2004 was 12.2. That's better than cities in the Northern Panhandle, but it lags behind Beckley (18.4), Charleston (14.3) and Morgantown (18.5) among others. Morgantown's birth rate was second in the state, but it was blown clear out of the water by Martinsburg's birth rate of 28.7.

So not only does the Eastern Panhandle city have to deal with an influx of migrants into that area, but part of its growth comes from the natural increase of its residents.

Going back to the 50-year migration numbers, Berkeley County's growth from natural increase was about half of that from migration. So migration plays the major role, but natural increase is helping, too.

Jefferson and Morgan counties show similar trends.