Art Woolf

Free Press contributor

How many Vermonters will be ringing in the new year in a few days? We don’t know exactly, but the Census Bureau tells us that 624,594 people lived in Vermont on July 1, 2016. That’s down 1,500 from one year earlier and it’s the third year in a row that Vermont’s population has declined. Our 2016 population is also below the Census’s 2010 count. Only seven other states lost population in 2016 and only three others — Connecticut, West Virginia, and Illinois — have fewer people today than in 2010. Vermont belongs to a very elite club — one that we shouldn’t want to join.

In contrast to Vermont’s population decline, the U.S. population grew by 0.7 percent in 2016 and has grown by just under 1 percent per year since 2000. Vermont’s growth rate of 0.3 percent per year over the past 16 years is one-third of the U.S. average.

Why is Vermont’s population stagnating? It’s pretty simple to break down the total population change into its basic parts: the difference between the number of births and deaths, immigrants moving into Vermont from other nations, and the gap between people moving into Vermont from other states and those moving out.

Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016 about 6,000 babies were born to Vermont mothers and about 5,500 Vermonters died, yielding what demographers call the natural population increase of 500 people. That number, shown in the blue line, has been falling for the past eight years as the number of babies born has been slowly decreasing and the number of Vermonters dying slowly increasing. As Vermont’s population ages, the number of deaths will begin to increase and births will either remain constant or fall so the blue line will inch closer to zero. In Vermont’s four southern counties, it’s already below zero.

Vermont’s immigrant population has also been a positive factor contributing to Vermont’s population change. The red line shows that for most of the early 2000s about 500 immigrants moved into Vermont each year. For the last two years, it’s been closer to 1,000 per year. According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of these immigrants are refugees. Even though that’s a small number, refugees do play a role in Vermont’s population change. Pew finds that Vermont has the fourth highest numbers of refugees as a percent of its population of any state in the nation. Without immigrants, and without refugees, Vermont’s population decline would be even larger.

Finally, and most important, is the net migration of people to and from other states. In the early 2000s, slightly more people moved to Vermont each year than left. But for more than a decade, more people have been leaving than coming. Last year nearly 3,000 more people left Vermont for other states than moved here. Even though we had more births than deaths, and immigration was positive, our population outflow is the reason for Vermont’s population stagnation and there’s no indication that will change. Indeed, as the graph shows, the rate at which people are leaving the state is increasing.

Vermont comes out high in many state ranking lists. But the ultimate ranking is not how people answer surveys or how experts configure their rankings. It’s in people’s choices of where to live. When more people leave a state than move in, means Vermont has a lot of undesirable qualities that overwhelm its assets. To be sure, other states are in a similar situation. Thirty-one states had net out-migration of population in 2016, including New York, California, and every New England state except for Maine and New Hampshire.

How long will Vermont’s population continue with this slow growth or stagnation? It has happened in the past. Between 1830 and 1960 Vermont’s population was virtually unchanged, increasing by only 0.3 percent per year, the same rate at which it has grown this century. The U.S. rate was more than six times faster. That change compounds into some significant results. Vermont’s population rose by 40 percent over that period. The U.S. population increased nearly fifteen-fold. For most of the 19th and first half of the twentieth century one of our biggest exports was people. That’s happening again. Will it remain true for the next 130 years? Check back on New Year’s Day of 2146 for the answer.

Population change in Vermont 2001-2016

Vermont population since 2000

Correction: Vermont is one of four states that have fewer people today than in 2010. This was incorrect in an earlier version of the story.

This column first posted online Dec. 29, 2016.

Art Woolf is associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont.