You can hardly swing a dead prairie dog in the Twin Cities these days without hitting someone who has moved here from North Dakota. In fact, you can hardly swing a dead prairie dog in the broadcast booth during a NARN show without hitting someone who moved here from North Dakota (sorry about that stain on your shirt Mitch).
This migration out of North Dakota to greener pastures has been going on for years now, and, as is detailed in the latest issue of The Economist, it's becoming more and more of a problem:
HAVING survived the winter, North Dakota's stouter residents feel they may as well stick it out, at least till the end of summer. But many younger folk have already left. Cold is one of several reasons why the state has a "brain drain" problem.
Virtually all the state's counties have been losing well-educated young people to other states. Only Iowa retains fewer of its young home-grown college-educated residents. And, as with Iowa, lack of good jobs is another crucial factor. With farm jobs slipping away, North Dakota has struggled to find new ones in services.
Whenever you see your state being compared to Iowa, you know you're not in good shape.
But North Dakota's brain-drain problem is also, paradoxically, a symptom of its success in educating its residents. It has the second-highest high-school graduation rate in the country, and ranks first in the number of students who continue on to college. The trouble is that they don't stay: the state ranks 22nd in the proportion of residents over 25 with a college degree.
North Dakota's education system is essentially creating a pool of educated talent that other states reap the benefits of.
This may be changing, gradually. Census estimates for 2004 show that the state's population grew for the first time since 1996, albeit by barely 1,000 people, to 634,000. Births outnumbered deaths, and the number of college graduates staying in the state for at least a year after graduation rose 3.5% to 57%. Chuck in rising elementary- and secondary-school enrolment, and a new theory is emerging: young families are returning to North Dakota, particularly to its bigger towns and suburbs.
Laugh if you will, but any positive population growth is welcome news for the Peace Garden State. Of course, it is important to realize where that growth is taking place.
The main beneficiary is Fargo, North Dakota's largest city, which grew by more than 20% in the 1990s. Microsoft, which bought a local company in 2000, now employs 1,000 people there. The city is spreading outward into the Plains, and its downtown boasts an increasing number of chic restaurants, including one based vaguely on Berkeley's Chez Panisse.
I would love to see how a restaurant in Fargo can be "based vaguely" on a Berkeley hot spot.
The thing about Fargo is that it doesn't exactly represent the heart and soul of North Dakota. It sits on the eastern border of the state and in many ways it's relationship to the rest of the state is similar to that of the East Coast to the Midwest. Fargo is the Manhattan of North Dakota if you will. (To continue this thread, you could also say that Grand Forks is the Boston and Bismarck the Chicago.)
In short, though very white and staid, Fargo seems to be just interesting enough to lure back young professionals. Tamra McCullough left North Dakota for Seattle in 1995 and got a job at Starbucks Coffee's headquarters. In 2002 she returned to Fargo with a husband and a son. She was afraid they would get bored, but they didn't. She encouraged Starbucks to open a shop in Fargo last June.
Starbucks may hardly be the apex of hipness. But Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based demographer, points out that good coffee is now part of the list of assets that North Dakota offers refugees from California and New York. The state's longer-established temptations are its schools and its clean air, plus the second-lowest average commute time in the nation and the lowest median house price.
Okay, so it's not exactly the Upper East Side. But to the folks in Richardton, Napoleon, or
None of this, of course, helps rural North Dakota, and many small farming towns are dying.
What to do?
This has led some locals to consider a modern version of an old idea, the Homestead Act of 1862, which helped to populate the Plains by giving settlers up to 640 acres of land in exchange for a commitment to stay for five years.
One of those lured by this bribe was the great-grandmother of Byron Dorgan, the state's Democratic senator. Mr Dorgan is the chief author of the New Homestead Act, which would provide a host of incentives to people who settle in counties that have lost more than 10% of their population in the past 20 years. These include tax credits for starting small businesses and buying homes, and a $3 billion venture-capital fund to seed new businesses.
Mr Dorgan has introduced the bill into the Senate twice already, in 2001 and 2003, with no success. Undeterred, he introduced a new version last month. "We may discover that [the demise of the Plains] was inevitable and there's nothing we can do about it," he admits. "But it won't be for lack of trying."
Dorgan never has passed on an opportunity to steer Federal pork to his state and it's the main reason why he keeps his seat in the Senate, despite not sharing the same political views as most NoDakians. In this case, it seems like even he realizes the hopelessness of the cause. You can throw more money at the problem, but you're not going to change the facts on the ground.
Young North Dakotans are going to continue to leave the small towns for better opportunities and lifestyles elsewhere. The best thing the state could do at this point is to try to make sure that more of those opportunities are available in places like Fargo, Bismarck, and Grand Forks. You aren't going to be able to keep 'em down on the farm, but you might be able to keep 'em in the state.
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