New Hampshire public schools opened this school year with 1,845 fewer children than last year — a decrease of 1.1%. But when it comes to state enrollment trends, the change was hardly surprising.
School enrollment in New Hampshire has steadily declined for 20 years, with no sign of a turning point. The state had the largest number of children in public school in its history in 2002: 207,684. But 2002 was the last year of growth. In 2022, the number of children had dropped to 161,755 that month, according to the Department of Education, a 22% drop over two decades.
And the proportion of children in New Hampshire has fallen sharply compared to other states. According to an analysis by the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, the state experienced the largest percentage decline in children under the age of 18 of any state between 2010 and 2020, with a 10.6% decline.
The decline in enrollment has reduced local school budgets and exacerbated the state’s labor shortages. The state faces shortages of health workers, from certified licensed nursing assistants to long-term care providers; A national nonprofit founded in New Hampshire is expected to have around 24,400 open positions for healthcare workers over the next decade. Schools and businesses have struggled to find staff, and the decline in school populations comes despite the state’s total population growing since 2002, from 1.26 million in 2002 to 1.39 million in 2022.
At Dover:The planned new public park of the city on the water does not receive any building offers. Here’s why.
“It’s important for school leaders to understand how declining enrollment numbers may affect their districts and how they can plan for the future accordingly,” Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said in a Nov. 15 news release accompanying the new figures.
A simple turnaround will likely be elusive; Demographers and analysts say the decline is the result of long-term trends, many of which are beyond the state’s control.
Here are some of the reasons for the decline.
New Hampshire’s birth rate does not keep up with class size
At the heart of the problem is a simple math equation: There aren’t as many children being born in the state as there were 10 years ago.
“What we’re seeing in New Hampshire is that the number of women of childbearing age is about the same, and yet the number of births has declined,” said Ken Johnson, a professor of sociology and senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy. “In other words, the fertility rate — the number of births per woman — has declined.”
This low birth rate is part of a national generational trend. As the state’s school population grew in the 1990s, many of the students were children of the baby boomers—the generation born between 1946 and 1964. This generation was notoriously large in number, and Boomer children filled classrooms in the 1980s and 1990s.
NH Schools:Young teachers in the state are leaving the profession. The “heartbreaking, annoying” reasons why.
But subsequent generations, like “Gen Xers” born between 1965 and 1980, didn’t have as many children, and the school-age population declined in the 2000s and 2010s.
The millennial generation, entering their 20s in 2001, has proven to be more disinterested in children than previous generations, a trend that has led to a decline in birth rates in New Hampshire and many other states.
Demographers say the drop in births is due to a range of factors, from societal changes centered around marriage and children to economic anxiety caused by high childcare costs and accelerated by the Great Recession. The US birth rate fell after that recession and has never recovered, Johnson noted.
But with most millennials now in their 30s, demographers say it remains to be seen how consequential the trend will be. People of childbearing age today might simply postpone having children until later in life, suggesting that fertility rates may be recovering after a delay. Or they could be completely disinterested in children, suggesting that the decline in the birthrate would be felt over the longer term.
The pandemic baby bump was probably just a blip
In 2021, New Hampshire received some positive news: The state saw a birth surge in the first half of the year. A study by Pew Trusts found that the state’s birthrate has increased 7% since 2019, making New Hampshire the fastest increase in the country.
State officials — from Gov. Chris Sununu to Department of Public Health Services director Patricia Tilley — welcomed the increase.
“We’ve certainly seen the numbers that all New Hampshire births are up in 2020 and 2021,” Tilley said in an interview.
In Portsmouth:Elf The Musical brings Broadway talent to Music Hall
However, Johnson warned that the surge appears to be short-lived. A number of states saw birth rates fall in 2020 as the COVID-19 outbreak and shortages of vaccines and reliable access to hospitals prompted many people to postpone pregnancy, Johnson said. In 2021, birth rates rose in many states across the country, including New Hampshire — the result of an effective backlog.
But in 2022, the state’s birth rate appears to be returning to pre-pandemic levels, Johnson said, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Migration to the state did not make up the difference
For years, New Hampshire has had a dynamic that has contributed to its low birth rate: the state tends to attract people in their 30s and 40s.
Between 2010 and 2020, seven of New Hampshire’s 10 counties experienced population growth, according to a review of Johnson’s census data. The growth was a result of migration to those counties, Johnson’s research found.
Overall, 89 percent of the state’s population growth in the decade between the 2010 census and the 2020 census was due to migration, Johnson said. Data shows many of these people were in their 30s and 40s, and many of them had children, Johnson said.
Housing:Portsmouth Secondary Units: ‘Easiest’ Housing Solution or Is It Too Late?
This migration has helped displace what demographers call the “natural decline” in the population — trends in which deaths outnumber births in an area. And it’s been the story for decades; two-thirds of people in New Hampshire over the age of 25 were not born in New Hampshire.
But lately, this migration hasn’t helped offset the declining birthrate.
“New Hampshire has traditionally had significantly more births than deaths,” Johnson wrote in a 2021 report. “But that excess has dwindled recently due to the growing number of seniors in the state and drug-related deaths among young adults.”
The pandemic has given a short-term boost to migration in New Hampshire. New Hampshire saw a net migration gain of 16,000 between 2020 and 2021 — a big jump for the state, driven in part by people fleeing cities amid COVID-19. But it remains to be seen whether this migration is a long-term trend, Johnson said.
And in the end, migration can only do so much, he said.
“If this type of migration were to continue, the number of children enrolling or attending school could increase somewhat,” he said. “But it will never be as much as the number of births. We’re talking about maybe a few extra thousand (through migration) compared to the birth of 12,000.”
Housing is a key barrier to trend reversal
If new arrivals to New Hampshire have historically helped increase the state’s school-age population, increasing those arrivals could be crucial in changing the picture of school enrollment today.
It’s a goal embraced by many in the state, from Stay Work Play New Hampshire to Sununu. “We’ve known for a long time that New Hampshire is the best state in the country to live, work and raise a family,” Sununu said in June, responding to the Pew study showing the surge in births in 2021 .
But any plan to do so will encounter a major, well-known hurdle, notes Phil Sletten, research director at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute: the New Hampshire housing crisis. With low housing availability and high prices, the door to New Hampshire is less open to younger generations than it used to be, Sletten said.
Less living space creates two problems, Sletten noted. “There’s more friction there for people to move into the state and take up the job opportunities that they see here,” he said.
“And there has also been less opportunity for children who graduate from New Hampshire schools to either stay here instead of finding housing and jobs elsewhere, or to return here after being away from New Hampshire for some time were,” he added.
The state is spending $100 million to try to boost housing by incentivizing cities and developers to work together under the InvestNH program. Legislators and executive councils have approved $50 million in federal funding to create 1,472 rental units over the coming years.
Increasing the state’s housing stock and restoring a healthy housing market will not reverse the larger demographic trends that are stifling school growth, Sletten said. But unless the market improves, the state’s population loss has little chance of changing either, he added.
“The housing shortage means that immigration—certainly to the extent that we’ve seen in New Hampshire in the second half of the 20th century—will become more difficult,” Sletten said.
This story was originally published by New Hampshire Bulletin.