![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/cheatham-vs-state-population-growth-rate.png\" "\\"cheatham-vs-state-population-growth-rate\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nUTK’s Center for Business and Economic Research has created a spreadsheet<\/a> of population forecasts for the next several decades that highlights that Cheatham County is suffering from an accelerating decline in population under 40.<\/p>\n They predict that the county population as a whole will continue to slowly grow around 1%.\u00a0\u00a0 However, the population under 40 (primarily young families with children) is forecast to plunge precipitously.\u00a0\u00a0 On average the county will be growing “older”.<\/p>\n This trend will devour the county’s seed corn of young families in just a few years unless halted.<\/p>\n The formula for population growth is:<\/p>\n Population growth = (births \u2013 deaths) + (in-migration \u2013 out-migration)<\/p>\n If we look at the actual data, we can see that net migration into the county collapsed in 2000.<\/p>\n There were 3 seminal events in that time period (that I can recall, anyway) that might be the cause:\u00a0\u00a0 The Dot.Com recession, the impact fee was raised from $750 to $7500, and AO Smith acquired State Industries.\u00a0 (If there’s another candidate event I’m overlooking, please let me know!)<\/p>\n If it were the Dot.Com recession, it is reasonable to assume it would have have had similar effects on other surrounding counties.\u00a0\u00a0 However, their population growth recovered to varying degrees, while ours lagged behind, which suggests the causative factor is something intrinsic to Cheatham County.<\/p>\n This is still a bit speculative (I need to more research to conclusively prove it), but after trawling through a ton of data, a large portion of collapse in net migration appears to be due to the impact fee.\u00a0 New home construction plummeted as soon as it was passed.<\/p>\n The impact fee caused the average home price after 1990 to to grow faster than before 1999, making buying a home a more expensive proposition and reducing the supply of affordable housing.<\/p>\n While the price of an average new home in Cheatham started growing faster in 2000, prices in Robertson and Montgomery counties were unaffected.<\/p>\n At the same time prices in Cheatham were starting to skyrocket, the average home price in Davidson actually dropped:<\/p>\n As you’ve probably noticed, we’re in the middle of an economic depression, similar in scope to the Great Depression of the 1930’s (although so far of lesser intensity).\u00a0 The conditions that precipitated it are unlikely to disappear for some time.\u00a0 The average Tennessean’s real income has yet to catch back up to what it was in 2007, much less where it should be, and there are currently more negative economic signs<\/a> than positive on the horizon.<\/p>\n For years, the county (in blue) had lower-than-average unemployment, both compared to the rest of Tennessee (green) and the country as a whole (red).\u00a0 That helped the county tremendously.\u00a0\u00a0 In good times people in Cheatham County had more jobs, and in bad times we lost fewer jobs.<\/p>\n This was probably due to State Industries’s growth providing an above-average supply of jobs, as well as selling something (hot water) which you have to have irregardless of how the economy was doing.\u00a0 But you can see starting around 2000 the gap began to narrow, and effectively vanished when the Great Recession hit.<\/p>\n The local unemployment rate has caught up with the national unemployment rate since roughly 2007.\u00a0 My hunch is that this is due to several factors:<\/p>\n A work in progress.\u00a0\u00a0 This will be updated from time to time. Population Cheatham County’s population growth (in blue) has been slowing for some time, and in recent years has grown slower than the Tennessee average (in red). UTK’s Center … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Since young families are often on a tight budget and can get more house for their dollar elsewhere, Cheatham lost out on growth to other counties, primarily Davidson.<\/p>\nIncome and Employment<\/h1>\n
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