On being a full country--or not (and what to do to help the less full places)

President Trump recently declared the nation "full" in relation to his attempt to stop immigration.  The New York Times took the opportunity of that declaration to explore and explain the parts of the country that are empty and, in fact, getting more empty.  That is, the Upshot brought us an interactive map showing which counties are losing population and how dramatic the loss is, particularly with regard to the prime working-age population (ages 25-54).  Nearly half of Americans live in a county where the demographic slice has shrunk in the last decade.

Here's an excerpt from the story that calls out "rural."

In smaller cities and rural areas, demographic decline is a fundamental fact of life. A recent study by the Economic Innovation Group found that 80 percent of American counties, with a combined population of 149 million, saw a decline in their number of prime working-age adults from 2007 to 2017. 

Population growth in the United States has now hit its lowest level since 1937, partly because of a record-low fertility rate — the number of children born per woman. The United States increasingly has population growth rates similar to slow-growing Japan and Western Europe, with immigration partly offsetting that shift.

Then City Lab yesterday published this by Richard Florida under the headline, "How Heartland Visas Could Reduce Geographic Inequality."   Here's an excerpt of the part(s) that is most closely related to the "emptiness" of rural America--also known as spatial inequality.

A new report by economist Adam Ozimek of Moody’s Analytics and Kenan Fikri and John Lettieri of the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) takes a closer look at the extent of America’s geographic divide and the factors that are driving it. But instead of stopping there, it also suggests a strategy for addressing it. To bolster the economies of struggling cities and regions, the authors’ proposed solution is placed-based visas (or “heartland visas”), which would effectively channel immigrants to the left-behind places that opt into the program.

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Historically, the U.S. has seen economic and demographic convergence as people moved to areas of greater opportunity. But as a growing body of research documents, such convergence has slowed in recent years; instead, the economic fortunes of the coasts and the heartland have been diverging.

In fact, America now has a dual pattern of migration. There are relatively high rates of mobility for more educated and skilled people, while less skilled, less highly educated citizens are increasingly stuck in place. (I recently called attention to this growing divide between the mobile and the stuck.)

 * * *

Heartland visas are not a panacea for all the myriad problems of struggling places. Many of these places lack research universities or global connectivity or other factors that are required for growth. And many of them have failed to develop the strategy to harness their assets and address the challenges they face. 

That said, creating incentives that would redirect high-skilled immigrants from established tech centers to less dynamic regions of the country could help spur growth in lagging places while taking some of the pressure off the already unaffordable housing markets of leading hubs.