Key Questions for the Western Pennyroyal: Military Migration, Diversification, and University Recruitment

Migration in the Western Pennyroyal has several truly unique features that may make its experience hard for other regions to duplicate. The most prominent such feature is the large amount of military personnel. But before that, I want to take a moment to look at WKU.

University Expansion: How Recruitment is Boosting Migration

While I was working on this post, some helpful western Kentuckians directed me to some information about Western Kentucky University and Bowling Green specifically. I complained while writing about the Bluegrass that UK didn’t offer detailed statistics about where outside students come from. As it happens, WKU does offer these detailed statistics. The school provides an annual 200 page long fact book providing detailed information about where students come from, and lots of other interesting data. Thanks to that source, we can estimate exactly how much of an impact WKU has on the Western Pennyroyal’s migration rates. For comparison, I’ve taken data from 2010.

See the full visualization and get the data here. WKU fans, higher ed wonks, and migration nerds should enjoy this.

The above graph shows what percentage of migration into the Western Pennyroyal (just gross inflows, not net migration) can be accounted for based on WKU undergraduate first year recruitment and transfers. I’m excluding all graduate students here due to data limitations.

WKU claims over 1/3 of the migrants from Cincinnati, and about 1/4 or 1/5 of all migrants into the Western Pennyroyal from the Bluegrass, Louisville, the Eastern Pennyroyal, and the Western Coalfields. When I restrict the data to just Warren County (where Bowling Green and WKU are located), the shares become even larger: WKU’s recruitment drives a mjority of the migration into Warren County from 6 different regions of Kentucky, and internationally.

This probably isn’t just churn either: WKU is probably boosting net migration rates as well. In 2001, WKU had 16,500 students. By 2007, it had risen to 19,200. Enrollment peaked around 21,000 in 2011, and has been around 20,000 since. An increase in the student population by almost 2,000 over the period of my analysis (2008–2012) would be likely to boost net migration by a similar amount.

Fort Knox: Positive Effects from Re-Alignment

Warren County’s unique feature is a large university. But there are other large institutions in the Western Pennyroyal that impact migration, such as two major military bases at Fort Knox and Fort Campbell. In 2006, there were 12,703 Department of Defense personnel stationed at Fort Knox, primarily located in Hardin and Meade counties. However, after the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, Fort Knox was scheduled to be significantly expanded. Payroll was to rise by nearly 50%, with over 4,000 new employees (and several entire new units).

Hardin and Meade Counties have seen major in-migration associated with this base expansion. From 2008 to 2012, almost 14,000 people moved into Hardin County, and 5,000 to Meade. This amounts to 2.6% and 3.5% migration rates, respectively: pretty stunningly high rates. More to the point, Meade and Hardin counties have seen extraordinarily high rates of churn, with 6.3% and 8.1% of the population having arrived within the preceding year. Between 7,000 and 10,000 of those migrants are probably Fort Knox personnel and their families (though some out-migrants are probably also military-related, as the BRAC re-alignments did include a relocation of some major armor functions away from Fort Knox).

Base expansions have secondary effects: family members move in as well, indirect jobs are created, construction increases, local tax revenues rise, government services improve, and so migration rates can increase even more. There’s an important point here for local policymakers, however: this is basically a policy beyond their control. Nationwide decisions about military spending and manpower levels have enormous implications for local policymakers, as every town with a nearby base knows.

Fort Campbell: Negative Effects from Base Re-Alignment

Fort Campbell, located in Christian County on the Tennessee border, has not had the same experience as Fort Knox. Fort Campbell did not enjoy the same benefits as Fort Knox in the 2005 BRAC process. Several units were moved into Fort Campbell, and some moved out, but, on net, the base lost at least one major unit, a helicopter battalion. The combination of major dislocations into and out of the area, as well as Fort Campbell’s status as an active national guard deployment site, creates an enormous amount of migration. Over 9,200 people moved into Christian County per year, while 8,100 moved out, meaning that at any given time from 2008–2012, about 11% of the county’s population arrived in the last year, and 12% of the county’s population a year ago moved out. This is an unbelievably high migration rate.

Christian County’s experience shows an example of what happens when military personnel patterns change even a little bit. Base expansion or reduction can make the difference between counties gaining or losing thousands of migrants. Both Hardin and Christian counties are roughly equivalent in terms of urbanization, commuting convenience to more major cities, and many amenities. What differentiates them is, mostly, different Federal choices.

Military Migration: A Case Study in Single-Sector Economic Development

Military migration creates a stark picture of big winners and losers, with very high annual churn: but it’s really an example for any region that is highly dependent on one business or industry. Much as the BRAC process is mostly out of the control of local policymakers, so is the aggregate demand for cars, or computers, or bourbon, or horse-racing, or any other product. If a given community is heavily reliant on one product for its trade with the outside world, it will be vulnerable to volatility.

Now, in principle, as long as we have a nationally connected labor market, that’s not a bad thing. There’s no fundamental reason why we should mourn the decline of one region or city and celebrate the rise of another. If a city grows because it offers good conditions to produce a valued product, and then later on that product isn’t as valued by the rest of society, so demand falls, then so be it! Military migration can be seen in this light: the “market demand” for soldiers changes (in this case, it’s a political market, but as far as a locality is concerned, its out of their control either way).

While it is highly disruptive for the communities involved when a base opens or closes, in the long run, we all recognize that military personnel decisions should be made nationally, not based on local economic development considerations. In the same way, localities should gain or lose migrants as their local products enjoy more or less outside demand. That’s an efficient result in a world where people are free to move.

Consider it this way: if, suddenly, people didn’t want to buy tech products anymore, or if the market for tech innovation changed radically in structure, Silicon Valley would suddenly have far less valuable product to trade with the rest of the nation. People would lose jobs or have declining wages. This would be hard, but, eventually, people would relocate to somewhere else better for them than Silicon Valley. The same is true of Detroit, or North Dakota’s oil fields, or Las Vegas, or Washington, DC, or anywhere else: when local industries thrive and bring in money from the outside world, migration booms.

While it may be tough for localities to hear, the reality is that location-focused economic development is often contrary to what’s best for people generally. For a modern economy to function, we need geographic areas to specialize their production to some degree, which means betting on the success of a certain product. When that product succeeds, it benefits the investing communities. When it fails, it doesn’t. As long as we live in a high-migration society, this process is clearly beneficial: people are used to moving, so they’re comfortable relocating to where they have a better shot. But as migration rates decline, the inherent dynamism in a modern economy may have greater human costs.