Census: Washington, Henry counties grow as Jefferson shrinks

Recently published census data revealed a variety of trends in Iowa’s population, with both positive and negative implications for Southeast Iowa.

Statewide numbers show urban communities growing as rural ones shrink. Henry County narrowly defied that trend, growing by 337 residents overall. Washington County, which state officials don’t classify as rural, gained 861 residents. Jefferson County, which is rural, lost more than 1,100.

“We were very diligent about making sure our people got counted, we worked to get that increase,” Mt. Pleasant Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Kristi Perry said. “We didn’t just sit back and let the census happen, we really worked hard to go out and make sure that people got counted.”

While a State Library of Iowa news release said that 99.9% of Iowa households responded to the decennial questionnaire, local anecdotes tell a different story. City officials in several communities, including Winfield, Brighton and Batavia, said the rate of decline on their census head counts puzzled them, and didn’t line up with water shut-offs over the last decade, suggesting that many residents may not have responded to the head count.

Made more difficult by the pandemic, which limited in-person follow-ups with non-responding households, the difficulty of measuring rural communities has long been a hurdle for the Census Bureau.

With potential flaws in mind, the new round of census data has numerous implications. The data will shape government budgets and determine federal and local election districts, though county auditors said it would not impact boundaries for upcoming city and school elections this November.

Washington County Seat and northern cities grew while other towns shrank

Washington County was a microcosm of one population trend visible across Iowa: big communities generally got bigger while small communities got smaller.

Kalona added nearly 300 residents in the last decade, more than any other city in all three counties. Washington and Wellman grew by around 100 each. Other than Riverside and Crawfordsville, which had net gains of 73 and 13 residents, respectively, every other town in the county shrank.

Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh said several factors were at play in the city’s unmatched growth.

“We’re always pretty steady in growth, this might be a little bit greater than what we see normally at 3-3.5% growth yearly,” he said. “We’ve got good, long-term employers here … It’s a wonderful school district, that’s really been an asset for our community … as well as CIVCO and EPC who maybe had to pivot a little bit from their business model here in Kalona, but they’ve done it well and kept a workforce.”

While it’s hardly the sole cause, Schlabaugh said ongoing housing developments were key to facilitate the population growth.

“We had some nice subdivisions come online, and we had some capacity for build-out in some others,“ he said. ”Valley View, for example, offered an opportunity for some of our long-term residents … and it opened up some of our single-family homes that were used by them for new residents.“

Census data confirms that Kalona has enjoyed steady, substantial growth for over a century, suffering no net population loss since 1910, when its population was 466.

Brighton and Ainsworth appeared to be shrinking the fastest in the county. Both lost around 50 residents since the last census, just under 10% of their populations.

Washington Economic Development Group Executive Director Mary Audia said small towns were up against a lot when it came to competing for residents in Washington County.

“I think along Highway 22 they’ve got a lot going on,” she said. “People go where the jobs are, people go where the good schools are, people go where there’s hospital systems.”

Of the three counties in the Union coverage area, Washington County remains the most white, but like the rest of the state it is gradually growing more diverse.

Washington County’s racial makeup went from over 95% identifying as only white in 2010 to 90.3% in 2020.

Most of that jump in diversity comes from a growing multiracial population, which increased from 318 to 1,058 people over the decade.

The number of residents identifying as only one race, but not white, Black, Asian, or American Indian more than doubled, from 303 to 756.

“I think people don’t really understand that Washington County is becoming more diverse. It may be at a slower rate, but it is,” said Dan Henderson, a member of the racial equality advocacy group Washington for Justice. “Almost 25% of our kids in our school system are non-white. Now, when you look at the total population, it’s less than that, but when you look at the school system … that’s our future, that’s where we’re headed.”

Henderson said the county’s diversification was capped by factors like housing, despite potential opportunities.

“There is a shortage of housing here that makes it difficult for migrant families to find a place that is reasonably priced and a decent place to live,” he said. “But I think overall, what we’re going to find is it’s still going to grow, if at a slower rate than Waterloo or Des Moines or Cedar Rapids.”

Jefferson County shrank from school closure and widespread but minor rural decline

Every city in Jefferson County saw populations drop, but almost none by more than 100 people.

Maharishi Vedic City was the exception to that rule: the community dropped from 1,294 residents in 2010 to 277 in 2020, accounting for the overwhelming majority of the county’s population decline.

“We built a couple of campuses on the northwest side of town, and we had over a thousand residents who were Vedic scholars from India residing there,” City Economic Development and Government Relations Director Kent Boyum said. “Since that time, that program has diminished, and the Vedic pundits aren’t here anymore.”

When that campus closed, Boyum said much of the school’s mostly international population returned to India to continue their studies.

The data paints a clear picture of the process. The number of residents identifying as Asian alone in Jefferson County dropped from 1,425 in 2010 to exactly 500 in 2020. For context, the demographic went from representing 8.5% of the population to 3.2% in one decade.

The county’s racial demographics have diversified slower than elsewhere as a result. While Jefferson County added over 1,000 residents identifying as Black or multiracial since the last census, the percentage of residents identifying as people of color grew far slower than other counties, from 12.4% to 13.4% over the decade.

While other communities lost fewer residents, the changes are still noteworthy. Although Fairfield’s population fell by less than 1%, going from 9,464 to 9,416, other communities hovered around 10% population declines, albeit from smaller populations.

The greatest proportional losses were in Libertyville and Batavia, which both shrank by nearly 14%, losing 41 and 69 people, respectively.

Fairfield Chamber of Commerce CEO Darien Sloat said the community held its own at a time when other rural communities across the state showed rapid declines.

“I take that as a modest win, that we have slowed the loss of population here,” he said. “In the last six months, it feels like we’ve seen a lot of people come through the door buying houses … we’re seeing some migration in that respect, people moving because they want to get out of congested cities.”

Sloat said Jefferson County communities took greater measures than most rural areas to attract new residents.

“We are part of a 10-county region defined by Indian Hills (Community College) working for two years on a project called Iowa South,” he said. “That is a project designed to show people who don’t live around here what the benefits are of living in this region. It is the only regional effort I’ve heard of to attract people to a rural set of counties.”

Henry County barely defied statewide census trends, but city counts paint a telling picture

Henry County showed a mixed bag of population growths and declines. Although most communities saw their numbers drop, very few did so by more than 20 people.

Those that grew followed a similar pattern, with neither New London nor Salem adding more than 20 residents.

While most towns saw populations go down, the diffusion of those losses over so many communities minimized the impact, and the county’s total population still grew.

There were, of course, some outliers.

The first is Mt. Pleasant, which boasted a nearly 7% population increase. While the growth defies every trend for the county, it demonstrates the statewide pattern of people moving into urban population centers and out of more remote, rural communities.

Mt. Pleasant Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Kristi Perry said the city’s manufacturing economy was its key to growth.

“We’re very fortunate to be a manufacturing community, and all of our manufacturers have had really good years,” she said. “As long as they stay strong, we’re going to continue to grow. If manufacturing has a tough year, then it’s definitely going to affect our entire community.”

Perry said the academic community in Mt. Pleasant was another contributing factor.

“We are very blessed to have Iowa Wesleyan University,” Perry said. “They are actually growing again, after a number of years where they did not … so that helps our community greatly.”

Another outlier, of sorts, is the disappearance of results for Mount Union, a reminder of the city’s dramatic unincorporation in 2016.

The community is now a “census-designated place,” (or CDP,) processed separately from town and city data on the census. Because of its new designation, Mount Union is now coded into a different data set.

Nonetheless, CDP data shows that Mount Union’s population grew to 120, making it the smallest community of all three counties to gain residents, despite dissolving as a city.

Lastly, Winfield stuck out from other shrinking towns. The community purportedly shrank faster, losing more than 100 residents, but locals suspect there may be a flaw in the data caused by non-responses.

“I think it has to be an issue of people not filling out the census,” Perry said. “I don’t really see any closures or any other reason for that kind of a drop in Winfield in the last 10 years.”

Henry County proved most reflective of statewide racial demographic trends. The area went from 92.1% white-only residents to 87.8%, more or less parallel with the statewide numbers, which went from 91.3% to 84.5%.

Mt. Pleasant was the most diverse in the county, with nearly 20% of its population identifying as people of color. The number offsets the rest of the area, where nearly every other city had less than 10% non-white populations except for Olds, at 13%.