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Stop the graying brain drain
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
Ever since the region’s manufacturing sector began to decline in the 1970s, the flight of young, well-educated men and women from Western New York has been a problem that’s frustrated business owners, educators and policymakers across region.
But the entire time they’ve bemoaned the negative impact of this “brain drain,” a UB sociologist says a second exodus that’s also robbing the region of its most precious resource—the human kind—has gone largely unnoticed. This is the flight of adults ages 50 and over—particularly highly educated, wealthy and middle-income adults—for warmer climates in places such as Florida, Nevada and South Carolina.
The cause of this mass migration from Western New York, as well as the factors that most influence those who choose to remain, were the topic of yesterday’s UBThisSummer lecture, “The Four Seasons: Perspectives of Midlife and Older Erie County Residents,” presented by Debra Street, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences.
“There isn’t just one brain drain in Western New York, but two,” said Street, whose remarks on the migration of older adults from the region were informed by a survey conducted during the summer and fall of 2007 by researchers at UB’s Regional Institute. “And we felt that this second brain drain of mid-life and older people—people with lots of energy and talent and knowledge—was a phenomenon worth studying.”
Although U.S. Census data indicates that 75 percent of Western New York residents ages 50 and over who changed homes between 1995 and 2000 remained in the region—and 4 percent of those who moved remained in New York state—Street says it’s still significant that the remaining 21 percent relocated to other parts of the country, with the top five most popular destinations being three counties in the state of Florida, as well as others in Nevada and Arizona. While the number of residents who remained in the region—as well as a marginal influx of residents from throughout the region—help offset these losses, she says the net outflow still was about 12,000.
However, Street points out the latest available census information from 1995-2000 fails to reflect a number of major developments in the United States over the past seven years, including not only economic factors such as $4-a-gallon gasoline and the sub-prime mortgage crisis, but also the potential impact of global warming, including a moderation of the harshness of Western New York’s winters and a boost in the frequency of hurricane strikes along the nation’s coastlines. In a few years, she says, forecasts for the nation’s Sunbelt might not look quite so sunny.
But what’s perhaps most promising, she says, is that results from UB’s “Four Seasons” survey suggests overall that there remains a high level of regional loyalty among mid-life and older residents in Buffalo and Erie County.
“We found that the oldest age groups expressed the strongest desire to stay in their own residences as long as possible,” she says, noting that 82 percent of survey participants age 75 or older saw themselves as living in their current community in five years. They’re also the group that’s least concerned about being able to pay their property taxes, she says, probably because they’re more accustomed to living on a fixed income than their neighbors ages 50-64.
In fact, Street says survey respondents pointed to affordable housing as the number one reason for remaining in Buffalo and Erie County. Other factors included friendly neighborhoods, safe communities, close family members, access to shopping, changing seasons and an overall high quality of life.
In light of this great desire to “age in place” and an increasingly graying population, Street offered a few suggestions to help Buffalo and Erie County remain an “elder-friendly” region. These included retrofitting existing homes and structures to create flat-level residences—which isn’t just about eliminating stairs indoors, but also those leading into the house—as well as a greater investment in public transportation for older residents who can no longer drive.
“These are the sorts of issues that keep people glued to their home communities,” Street says, referring to these suggestions, as well as the long list of other factors already being enjoyed by local participants in the survey. “And for all the complaining we do about the weather,” she says, “they (survey participants) still said that they liked the changing of the seasons.”