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Who, What, Where - and Why
Little-noticed demographic shifts signal permanent changes to state's ethnographic profile
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Business New Haven
7/8/2002
By: Lisa Micali
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The 1990s brought New Haven County higher incomes, better-educated adults and a vast influx of immigrants - mostly Hispanic and Asian - according to data from the 2000 U.S. census.
Over the last decade, New Haven County, Connecticut's third-largest after Fairfield and Hartford, grew from 804,219 residents to 824,008, a modest 2.5 percent increase. Most of that growth came from swelling minority groups, notably Latinos, whose numbers jumped from 51,003 to 83,131, a 63-percent increase between 1990 and 2000.
Minority growth, particularly in the Hispanic population, is a trend felt across the nation and is expected to radically alter the country's ethnographic profile by 2050. America's Latinos currently represent about 12 percent of the population, according to census figures, but by 2050 they will account for 24 percent of people living in the U.S., analysts predict.
In Connecticut, the Hispanic population grew from 213,116 in 1990 to 320,323 in 2000, a whopping 50.3-percent increase. The picture was similar in New Haven, where Latinos represented the fastest-growing minority group, followed by Asians. The Hispanic population grew by 53.3 percent, and now comprises 26,443 residents, up from 17,243 in 1990.
By comparison, Bridgeport's Spanish-speaking community stands at 44,478, about 32 percent of the Park City's population. In 1990, that figure was 37,547, or about 26.5 percent of the population.
Hartford's Latinos, who represent Connecticut's largest concentration within a single municipality, numbered 49,250 or about 40 percent of the city's population. In 1990 that number was 44,137 or about 31 percent of the total figure.
In New Haven, the more interesting story involves who moved here during the past decade than who in fact departed (or died). The Elm City's population actually increased slightly after a 1995 estimate from the state's Department of Economic & Community Development placed New Haven's population close to the 118,000 mark. After 1995, it regained population and now stands at 123,626, compared to 130,474 in 1990. That's a 5.2-percent drop - but it may obscure more subtle demographic trends within that decade-long span.
“If you only look at the ten-year snapshot in time,” explains Roland Lemar, a New Haven city planner, “you'll see the population certainly decreased but we came back from the lull we were probably in after the recession and recovered population since 1995.”
Lemar attributes New Haven's modest rebound in population growth to the Elm City's resiliency. Growth in the services employment sector, health care, a relatively stable industrial base and the ability of New Haven to attract new industries have all played an important role, he says.
“Increases in the quality of life [are] probably the most important thing,” Lemar says. “Whether it's something like the International Festival of Arts & Ideas or ensuring that the schools are of good quality, or something as simple as constructing newer and more attractive housing. When [housing] prices along the southwestern portion of Connecticut became completely unaffordable, people started looking at New Haven instead.”
Like national regions, New Haven has witnessed a sweeping demographic shift from an overwhelmingly Caucasian population to one considerably more diverse. In New Haven, the white population has been declining steadily. The number of whites has dropped from 53 percent in 1990 to 44 percent today. White Americans now comprise 72 percent of the U.S. population, and 82 percent of Connecticut's.
The African-American community is changing, too. New Haven's black population increased slightly to 37 percent from 36 percent in 1990. Asians, on the other hand, nearly doubled their growth in the city to four percent, on a par with U.S. numbers at 4.1 percent of the population but below Connecticut's 2.4 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau projection for 2050 is 9.3 percent or 37.6 million.
“The city is becoming much more diverse,” says Lemar. “That's true for all cities throughout the country. Immigrants come to our cities because the opportunities are available there. Things like housing are cheaper, there's public transportation and jobs. However, it creates a demand within the schools and shapes educational policy. We're forced to recruit from a different stock of qualified teachers than most surrounding municipalities or towns because we have such diverse needs amongst our student body.”
The city, with its college population, is a young one. The average age is only 29, a figure that hasn't changed from the 1990 census figures. City Hall is working on “quality of life” initiatives to address the needs of young people and, it is hoped, retain them.
“When we looked around at prosperous cities in the 1990s, we were able to identify a lot of the drivers like technology or biotechnology companies present. We can't adopt the attitude of that 'If we build it they will come' mentality,” adds Lemar. “What we are doing is creating an atmosphere for companies to want to exist and to succeed here. And that includes quality-of-life concerns and things like the [Arts & Ideas] festival, the [Farmington canal] greenway and its bike trails, baseball fields and funding schools to the proper level.”
The numbers reflect the changing face of a county in which a demographic shift is slowing taking root, with whites representing a smaller percentage of the population. They're moving out to the suburbs while minorities and younger people interested in urban living are coming in.
In municipalities such as East Haven - where less than a decade ago the African-American population numbered just 0.9 percent of all residents - the number has grown to 1.5 percent. Most of those new residents are what Mayor Joe Maturo Jr. calls “young family, first-time homebuyers” who flock to the town because of its low housing prices and good schools.
East Haven has its challenges, too. “Growth helps [residents] and hurts them,” explains Maturo. “In one respect, it helps them because their houses are worth more. But in another it penalizes them a little bit because they have to pay a little more in taxes.”
East Haven's population swelled from 26,144 in 1990 to 28,189 in 2000, a 7.8-percent increase. The town's minority base has grown, too, especially the number of non-whites - which is good for East Haven's all-white image says Maturo. “They used to say that minorities don't want to come to East Haven,” he explains. “But the numbers show that they are coming.”
That growth also places strains on East Haven's education system. There is overcrowding in some grammar schools, Maturo says, because of the rapid influx of young families.
“It costs on average $8,000 per child in a community like ours per year [to provide public education]. But we don't have the tax base that Branford or North Haven has where their net grand list is double ours,” explains Maturo. “I have to find the equilibrium at budget time to maintain a fair and equitable tax base for our community. But that comes with a price.”
Maturo predicts that this trend will only be exacerbated once the parents of the Baby Boom generation start leaving the community to relocate to retirement homes and communities. This brings an influx of young families, which again places stress on the town's tax base.
“I'm trying to bring in more commercial property,” Maturo explains, “to help our tax base take the burden off our seniors as well as the young people in the community.”
Like East Haven Madison, the fastest-growing municipality in New Haven County, once was a sleepy shoreline town accustomed to low growth and an affluent, virtually all-white population, has seen its share of change over the last decade.
The town's population grew from 15,485 to 17,858 residents between 1990 and 2000, a 15-percent increase. Growth like that translates into an increased demand for housing and other municipal services such as schools, police, fire and waste-disposal.
“It's just unbelievable,” says Town Clerk Ruth Harris. “We're building a new high school to accommodate the rapidly growing student population.”
Along with population increase, the town has seen its median household income swell by 52 percent, from $46,176 in 1990 to a whopping $87,497 ten years later. With more money, the town has seen a housing boom with prices to match. In 1990, the town had 1,231 housing units. Today, that number is 7,386.
The average home value in Madison is $260,000, and most of those houses contain on average 7.5 rooms - more living space than any other municipality in New Haven County.
The town has a large number of recently arrived professional people who can afford to build huge houses on one- to three-acre plots of land, she says. In fact, one out of every two residents has an advanced degree, something New Haven can't match - just a quarter of all residents in New Haven have an advanced degree.
Madison's growth, Harris says, stems from two distinct groups: retirees and people being edged out of the Fairfield County market.
“From land records, you can tell that a lot of people are moving here are from Fairfield County,” says Harris. “We're also getting a lot of well-to-do retirees coming here from as far away as California, but most come from New York and New Jersey.”
While Connecticut may continue to be the wealthiest states in the nation, Census 2000 data points to the challenge city planners and mayors face across the state: the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor.
The economic boom of the 1990s raised the incomes of the poorest Americans, held the size of the middle class steady and swelled the ranks of those with six-digit incomes - especially in Connecticut.
But there were notable exceptions in places where the middle class shrank while the ranks of the rich and poor expanded.
They include metropolitan areas from Bridgeport and Stamford to New Haven, Waterbury and Hartford, cities where median incomes fell during the past decade while individual and family poverty rates increased.
In New Haven, the average household income grew 14.7 percent, or roughly 1.4 percent each year, to $29,604 in 2000 compared to 1990's $25,811. New Haven County as a whole reported average household incomes of $48,834 in 2000 and $38,471 in 1990 respectively. Poverty may have increased here in New Haven because of high numbers of immigrants from poor countries, or in some cases, an ailing local economy.
What's clear is that the surrounding communities are getting richer while the cities are getting poorer.
Certain problems, such as poverty, affect almost one-third of all families in New Haven with children under age 18, an 11-percent increase over 1990's numbers. Race relations have become more complex, as Hispanic immigrants change many neighborhoods' traditional ethnic mixes. And aging Baby Boomers - those born between 1947 and 1966 - have also changed the economy, driving housing and other markets up.
Remarkably, despite the scope and scale of expansion and growth over the past decade, New Haven is adjusting to a changing landscape with relative equanimity.
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