What can slow the population loss in rural Pennsylvania? Local officials have ideas.
“The bottom line is more people are dying than having babies.”
For some officials whose rural counties are teeming with tourists and second-home buyers, the report seemed flat-out wrong. Others, in more far-flung reaches of the state, saw the Center for Rural Pennsylvania’s population loss predictions as a sober reality.
They’ve witnessed it firsthand.
“It’s like watching a trainwreck in slow motion,” said Mark Critz, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s western regional director. “This is not a new issue. We have been losing population in rural areas for 30 years. If they are not losing population, they are staying stagnant.”
Critz was one of several panelists who discussed population change and potential solutions Wednesday morning at a Center for Rural Pennsylvania hearing in Mercer County, 350 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The panelists, most of them elected officials and school district employees, all hailed from the region, from counties including Venango, Elk, McKean, and Forest. All four, according to the center’s recent report, will see significant population loss by 2050 with Elk alone expected to decrease by 15%.
“Needless to say, it has generated a lot of conversation,” said State Sen. Gene Yaw, the center’s chair.
Overall, Pennsylvania’s population is expected to rise 1.6% by 2050, but that growth will be narrowly centered on Philadelphia and surrounding Southeastern counties. The center found 46 counties could see a population decrease, mostly due to an aging population and decreasing number of births. Pike County, in the Poconos, was predicted to see the most drastic loss — 24.3% — far outpacing other rural counties.
“The bottom line is more people are dying than having babies,” Yaw said of rural counties.
Panelists discussed a slew of potential solutions to stop the bleeding, the same challenges communities across the country, rural or urban, also face: housing, jobs, education, and health care.
Rural Pennsylvania’s housing stock, panelists noted, is older, smaller, and often in disrepair, compared to more desirable homes in suburban areas.
“Big builders aren’t interested in small towns,” said State Rep. Dan Moul, of Adams County.
To make matters worse, Pennsylvania’s older generations are staying in those homes because there’s a dearth of senior housing.
“I spoke to one woman who had to move her 85-year-old parents 85 miles away,” McKean County commissioner Tom Kreiner said.
Panelists also discussed access to quality health care as a factor in population loss. Many rural Pennsylvania hospitals have shuttered or drastically reduced services over the last decade.
“If people have to drive 45 minutes for health care for their kids or their spouse, they’re just not going to do it,” said State Sen. Michele Brooks, who represents Crawford, Lawrence, and Mercer Counties.
Pike County has no hospital or urgent care, and officials there both balked at the report’s predictions and said it could prevent potential health care providers from building there. Last month, officials in Pike and other Pocono counties told The Inquirer their population was growing, and that the center didn’t take a COVID-19 pandemic population shift into account.
“Recent studies don’t account for the significant driver of population growth an Amtrak train connecting NYC to Scranton through the Poconos would have for the region,” Chris Barrett, CEO of the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau, said in an email Wednesday.
It’s not clear those Poconos crowds and home sales equate to new residents, however. Officials with the Wallenpaupack Area School District said enrollment decreased there, from 1,500 in 2010 to 1,000 today and that number could drop to 800.
On Wednesday, Forest Area School District superintendent Amanda Hetrick told the panel her schools have 400 students, down 100 from 2010. Forest County is one of Pennsylvania’s most rural, with 6,973 residents that include those incarcerated at a state prison. Hetrick said school mergers and shared services, while laudable, would likely compel more families to move away.
“My kids are already on the bus for an hour a day, one way,” she said.
Panelist Rod Wilt, executive director of the Penn-Northwest Development Corporation, in Mercer County, suggested a change in attitude, among other things.
“We really need to market ourselves to ourselves,” Wilt said. “We need to stop telling people to move away.”