Population of young slips Drop sharp in northern Maine

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Results from the 2000 Census confirm that the portion of Maine’s population younger than 18 is shrinking, both as a percentage of the state’s population and in raw numbers. The drop in numbers of youths is especially acute in Aroostook, Washington and Piscataquis counties, while in Cumberland and York counties the numbers actually rose.

This trend has ramifications for both schools and the economy.

Some regions will face the mounting prospect of school closings and consolidation. The slide in the number of youths also could translate into a future labor shortage that may dampen economic growth by making labor costly and crimping the pipeline of new ideas and enterprises.

The number of those younger than 18 in Maine fell from 25.2 percent of the state’s population in 1990 to 23.6 percent in 2000, according to the census.

As the baby boom generation ages beyond childbearing age, it has been predicted that the percentage of the nation’s youth will become a smaller portion of the nation’s population. In fact, according to census data, from 1990 to 2000, those younger than 18 grew from 25.6 percent of the nation’s population to 25.7 percent.

Nationally, the number of youths increased from 63.6 million in 1990 to 72.3 million in 2000, a rise of 13.7 percent.

Those national figures make Maine’s numbers much starker.

Maine’s youth population – those who aren’t old enough to vote – already has begun to contract.

In round figures, there were 309,000 youths in Maine in 1990, and last year there were just 301,000, amounting to a drop of 2.6 percent.

If the Maine trend persists, according to the Census Bureau, by 2025 Maine will have one of the smallest percentages of youths among all states and the District of Columbia, plunging from 42nd place in 1995 to 49th. Youths are expected to make up barely 20 percent of Maine’s population in 2025, according to the Census Bureau projections, compared to nearly 24 percent nationally.

Seven Maine counties already have begun to experience substantial losses of their youth population, said James Breece, a macroeconomic forecaster in the University of Maine System, who also serves on the state’s revenue forecasting committee.

Along with Aroostook, Washington and Piscataquis counties, which experienced double-digit percentage losses in their total number of youths, Androscoggin, Franklin, Penobscot and Somerset counties saw their youth populations shrink by at least 7 percent. Just four counties, all along the coast, saw noticeable increases in the number of their population younger than 18.

The flip side of the coin is the state’s elderly population, those 65 and older. While 2000 Census figures breaking out the elderly from the general population will not be released for a few months yet, it is expected that Maine’s elderly population will continue to burgeon.

“We’re already facing the aging phenomenon,” said Deirdre Mageean, a demographer and director of the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy at the University of Maine.

Using results of the 1990 Census and 1998 estimates, the federal Census Bureau reckoned that the rising tide of Maine’s senior citizen population has pushed the state’s ranking from the 18th-highest proportion of elderly to 10th-highest.

Growth in the proportion of Maine’s elderly is projected to outpace the elderly growth rate for the nation as a whole. The Census Bureau predicts that the elderly will have grown from 13.3 percent in 1990 to 21.4 percent of Maine’s population by 2025.

Nationally, the percentage of the elderly is projected to grow from 12.6 percent to 18.5 percent over the same period.

Midcoast counties have seen significant increases in their elderly population, as the region has become a retirement destination.

Knox, Lincoln, and Waldo counties, all of which had significant gains in population between 1990 and 2000, each aged at a quicker pace than the state as a whole, showing the elderly are moving into those areas.

In both Knox and Lincoln counties in the 1990s, in-migration made up roughly 95 percent of the population growth, while natural increase – the difference between the number of births and deaths – made up just 5 percent, according to figures from Mageean.

In comparison, almost all the other counties that aged faster than the state average had significant overall losses of population, showing young adults and families with children were moving out.

Only a handful of communities in southern Maine are expected to run counter to the trend of falling numbers of children over the next decade, according to the Maine Department of Education.

Fewer children could mean smaller classes, smaller schools, and fewer teachers. Shrinking enrollments also mean less aid from the state and the federal government, which distribute school funding, to a great extent, based on student populations.

However, existing buildings can’t be downsized even as enrollment dwindles. School districts will still have to maintain buildings and heat them, even if they hold fewer pupils.

Yellow Light Breen, director of special projects for the state Department of Education, said that districts would have to wrestle with these “fixed costs” as students ebb away.

In at least one way, educators will have to reverse the standard thinking of the past, Breen said. For the most part, school districts thought in terms of ever-larger enrollments when it came to school construction. In the future, districts “will have to be more cautious about overbuilding,” Breen said. Beyond facilities, the shrinking enrollments will lead to questions about the availability of programs and regionalization.

Walt Harris, director of research and evaluation in the College of Education at the University of Maine, said that schools have a “baseline” of services that they must provide to students.

If one takes a “microperspective,” smaller enrollments mean smaller classes, which in some ways is good, Harris said. At a more macro level, high schools must maintain a certain mass of students to offer a variety of courses and activities.

The loss of children causes “significant strife as school districts are faced with the dilemma of funding a school for smaller and smaller numbers of kids,” Harris said.

It can be anguishing if a district that identifies closely with its school gets to the point of deciding whether to shut it down and send its children elsewhere, Harris said. “This is serious business.”

Alexander in Washington County is facing the possible closing of its K-8 elementary school. Enrollment has fallen from a high of 103 pupils in the early 1990s to just 66 this year, according to May Bouchard, superintendent of School Union 106.

Because of falling enrollment, state aid is falling. Also, the school is losing tuition money as fewer students from nearby Crawford enroll in Alexander. Given the situation, Bouchard said that in February, the school board asked her to look at the financial ramifications of closing the school.

At the school board’s March meeting, about 100 parents showed up, she added, with the majority expressing a willingness to raise taxes rather than close the school.

The elementary school means a lot to Alexander, Bouchard said. “It is the hub of the community. The only other public building is a little grocery store.”

The shrinking youth base eventually will cause the state’s labor force to contract, making it harder for businesses to find workers, said Richard Sherwood, a policy development specialist with the State Planning Office.

This could benefit workers because salaries could rise because of the labor shortage. Conversely, it could be bad for employers who would see their wage bills expand.

That could deter businesses from moving to Maine, acting like a brake on economic development, Sherwood added.

According to Breece, the UMaine economist, fewer young workers could slow the introduction and development of new technologies and ideas in Maine’s economy, because it is the young who learn and often implement new ways of doing things.

Those new ideas could decline with the fall in the youth population, Breece said.

A way to counteract that kind of slide is through improving the skill level of the work force, Breece said. To sustain economic growth in the face of a declining working-age population, a state needs the value-added labor that comes from a skilled labor force. A better-educated work force will command higher salaries and generate ideas that would buoy economic activity, Breece said.

The shrinking share of youths and the growing proportion of elderly will cause shifts within the economy. Businesses that sell child-oriented products could see revenues slump while firms that cater to the elderly should thrive. The same holds true for social services, Mageean said. “Less teachers will be needed, but more nurses will be needed.”

An unexpected trend that began in the 1990s is that coastal Maine became a retirement destination, Mageean said. With retirees comes their “mailbox economy” of pension, dividend and Social Security checks. If the wealthy elderly move to Maine, they could offset somewhat a shrinking labor force, and possibly even expand the tax base. The wealthy elderly can pump money into the economy because of their spending power and the taxes they pay, compared to those relying on Social Security to scrape by. Retirees buttressed midcoast counties, especially Knox, Lincoln and Waldo, which all saw their overall populations increase substantially in the 1990s.

However, Mageean was quick to state, “We don’t have a good handle on how well-off the elderly are. Are they relying on Social Security or 401(k) retirement plans and stocks?”

Peering into the future, Mageean said, “The devil in all this is migration.”

But in Maine it would take an enormous, long and sustained period of in-migration of young adults or families with children to change the composition of the population, Mageean said. So far, there has been no evidence that that will happen.

Though the population loss in Aroostook County is cited frequently, Piscataquis County may have the grimmest outlook. From 1990 to 1999, there were nearly 300 more deaths than births in the county. Piscataquis is the only county in the state where deaths outpaced births.

According to Breece, the loss of youths could be stemmed by greater economic activity.

Belfast was projected to have a significant decline in its youth population but the coming of MBNA turned that around, he said. “So let’s not turn the lights off yet in Aroostook County.”