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No Comments [ Add Comment ]State population forecast: More of us, often 'homemade'
By DI LEWISUtah is still growing, but the numbers are slowing.
Fewer people will move to Utah in the next year, said Scott Festin, Wasatch Front Regional Council planner, but natural growth will remain high.
He said in-migration already had started to taper by July 1, the end of the last measurement period. Utah's relatively strong economy was still attracting job seekers, he said.
However with the slowdown in the economy, Festin said in-migration should decline even faster.
"Most of our population growth is homemade, if you will," he said. "We do have the highest birth rate in the country. We marry young. Women have more children in Utah over their lifetime than elsewhere."
Hispanics and other minorities tend to have higher birthrates than the population as a whole, and Ogden seems to have a higher percentage of minority residents than the state average, Festin said.
Those factors will feed the natural increase during the next several years, he said.
Pam Perlich, senior research economist at University of Utah, said the growing population will increase demand for community services over the next 30 years, but not in the same ways.
"This is not just a supersized version of the same old past," she said.
More ethnic diversity is in the future of Utah, she said.
Perlich said that although growth is slower right now, Utah in general and specifically Weber County will get net in-migration.
Aging baby boomers and immigrants will create new sectors of the population, which will in turn create demand in areas where it had not previously been, she said.
She said Utah will probably not become a retirement mecca, so most of the growth will come from younger parts of the population.
People associated with the ski industry, manufacturing, Weber State University and Hill Air Force Base will continue to create more diversity in Weber County, Perlich said.
New households of people coming to Utah for jobs and families with young children will increase demand for schooling, housing and transportation, Perlich said.
"It's more demand for everything because the characteristics of people moving in might not be the same," she said.
The impact of a growing population won't be felt in Ogden as much as in suburban areas, said Greg Montgomery, Ogden senior planner.
Much of the city's infrastructure, such as sewer and water lines, were planned for a larger population, he said, and the city would welcome more people in the downtown area.
Montgomery said the city's challenge is to make sure everything is up to date and upgraded, not to redesign the infrastructure to accommodate more people.
It's not just increasing population that affects the demand for services at the Weber-Morgan Health Department, said director Gary House.
"To determine what the impact would be, you need to be looking at all the variables, not just the growth in population," House said.
House doesn't expect to make any significant changes in service delivery because of population change.
The economic downturn has had an impact, but it affects services differently, he said.
Population growth alone might worsen air quality because of more cars on the road, he said.
However, the cause of changes in demand for services are so varied that House said there is nothing which would cause an across-the-board increase or decrease.
Demands in other areas are expected to change, Perlich said.
As a more culturally and ethnically diverse population moves in, restaurants catering to varied tastes may spring up, she said.
With an aging population, there will be more demand for smaller affordable housing, walking communities and easy transportation options.
Perlich said as more people move here for lower-income jobs, they may not have benefits and would have to rely on government assistance for health care.
The older population may also place a demand on government help, if they develop health problems or don't have sufficient savings, Perlich said.
She said longer life spans will mean the state will see an increase in older, single-person households.
"If you're planning for the future, you can't be expecting that the past is going to be replicating itself, because we have a whole different future in front of us," Perlich said.
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