Sometimes after one of our events, as people ask me how it went and what I found interesting as moderator, I find myself repeating a nugget of info over and over. In the case of our last Power Breakfast on the topic of Des Moines’ rapid growth, it was information via Iowa State University economist Liesl Eathington that since 2000 Des Moines’ natural birth rate (births minus deaths) was the best of all 20 Midwestern peer cities she studied.

In other words, if you locked people in place and didn’t allow any migration, our region would still be growing at just under 5 percent. And that’s really good news for our future growth: “We tend to focus on migration and neglect the natural change because the effects of it tend to be farther out in the future,” Eathington said. “But if you think about it, those people being born today are going to be the workforce when we reach that 2040 mark.” 

(The Oct. 25 Power Breakfast focused on Greater Des Moines’ projected growth to 1 million residents by 2040.)

This growth differs from the state as a whole, as more than half the counties in Iowa are in a state of natural decline. 

But for Des Moines, our top-in-the-Midwest natural birth rate is good news in addition to the fact that we currently rank No. 1 in percentage of population between ages 25 and 34, and also No. 1 in the 35-44 age range. 

It appears that we have done a good job with our manufacturing process in attracting and retaining the key age 25-34 population, and that hasn’t been the case for many other major cities. Maybe that comes as no surprise because of what many of us here have experienced, but perhaps we hadn’t realized the uniqueness of Des Moines until more recently. Take these excerpts from a piece in Politico that highlighted the challenges cities are facing with the 25-34 demographic via a survey of metro mayors across the country (Iowa didn’t have any mayors in the survey). Chief among them: retaining millennials as they age into careers, marriages and families. 

“People get into their 30s and their priorities change — it’s not a hard concept,” says (Joel) Kotkin (a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University). “I have a colleague in Seattle who’s said, ‘Look, Amazon has a real problem, and it’s that they can’t hold their employees after two to three years because they can’t afford to live in Seattle.’ ”

“Millennials are making different choices,” he continued. “Some people are going to Nashville, and saying they can live a walkable life there and they can actually afford it. If you want to live that urban core life for 5-10 years and then you get married and want to move to the suburbs, you can still do it.”

Sounds a bit like Des Moines, right? Here’s one more:

“People recognize that to keep millennials in your city you want to have affordable housing, good transportation, good schools,” said William Frey, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. “But instead they read these books about having cool cities, and coffee shops, and jazz clubs or whatever, and the key thing is, as with any other generation, when they have kids and start jobs and careers they’ve typically always moved to the suburbs.”

The downtown serves as an engine to attract, and the suburbs, schools, affordable living to retain. Rainbows and sunshine, right? 

Well, Eathington did provide a warning. When you look at the percentage of our population in the next age group of 45-54, Des Moines drops close to the bottom of the 20 Midwest cities Eathington studied. “When we get to the mid- and later career group, all of a sudden we kind of empty out,” she said. 

The question is why? Eathington is doing some additional research into what is happening ­— or maybe past-tense happened — and we’ll follow up with her to further explore. Here are a couple of my own rough hypotheses. 

One guess is that perhaps many in this demographic are less rooted because they no longer have children living at home, and the attractive quality of this being a great place to raise a family no longer has as much pull. This would lend itself to saying we have an ongoing challenge to solve in retaining empty nesters. 

Or perhaps this drop is the result of past faults. Maybe the aforementioned downtown-suburbs attraction-retention engine wasn’t working as well when this group was in its 20s and 30s. People currently in the 45-54 range would have been in the 25-34 range in 1997. For clarity, somebody 45 today would have been 25 in 1997, and somebody 54 today would have been 34. It’s no secret the downtown and the region’s cultural offerings have come a long way since 1997. And those cultural offerings should continue to make it more attractive for that 45-54 age group to stay in the region.

Eathington’s research will provide more clarity, but it’s good to know we are procreating at a high rate, and retaining population in the early stages. It’s been a key to our growth. Our metro population grew 11.4 percent since 2010, faster than all 19 of our Midwest peers that had an average growth of 3 percent. We’re sitting strong with good leading indicators. But, as with any manufacturing process, consistent inspection, correction and optimization will be key for long-term growth.

Here’s a video of Eathington’s demographic breakdown: http://bit.ly/2iFX2AL  

Here’s a link to the Politico article: http://politi.co/2gPZaEN