About Alabama — Homegrown Alabama

Chances are that most people who read this column are “homegrown” Alabamians. An estimated 70 percent of those who live in the state today were born here, according to recent research on homegrown populations done for Governing magazine, using data from the Census Bureau.

Alabama’s homegrown population percentage is the 10th-highest among all 50 states. It isn’t the highest in the Deep South, however. Louisiana and Mississippi rank above Alabama. In the rest of the South, the percentage of residents who were born in the state is lower.

One other region of the country is populated largely by homegrown residents: the Midwest —particularly Michigan. Throughout the country as a whole, about half of all residents were born in the state where they reside.

City populations also vary this way. In Birmingham, eight of every 10 residents are homegrown Alabamians, the fourth-highest percentage among U.S. cities. Mobile (72 percent) and Montgomery (70 percent) also have large homegrown populations, but in Huntsville, almost half of all residents were born elsewhere.

There are advantages to having a large homegrown population. Perhaps the biggest is that the social fabric of the community is likely to be stronger when friends and family retain close ties. On the other hand, a lot of the population movement from state to state is based on job opportunities. Thus economic conditions may be better in states that are drawing new residents from other places and therefore have lower homegrown percentages.

Politics also are affected by demographic characteristics. William Frey, a Brookings Institution scholar who worked on this study, pointed to the challenge of governing areas with large homegrown populations. He stated that “interest groups, biases and preferences are much more well-known and harder to overcome” when populations are stable and attitudes more settled.

While Frey and his colleagues may not have any particular knowledge of this state, their work could help Alabamians understand why forward-thinking political leadership is such a rare and prized commodity in the Heart of Dixie.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Jim Williams is executive director for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. Jim may be contacted at jwwillia@samford.edu.