After tornadoes

Mississippi and West Virginia have seen their populations decline. The implications for funding pensions and public education could make living in shrinking states even less attractive for younger people, who will finance those debts. Growing states such as Texas and Florida will have an economic advantage.

This will also influence the country’s politics. Texas, Florida, Colorado, Montana, Oregon and North Carolina have all gained population, and therefore congressional seats, while seven states, including New York and California, have lost seats. According to the 2020 Census, the South now has ten of the country’s 15 fastestgrowing cities with a population of 50,000 or more. About 62% of Americans now live in the West and the South, compared with 48% in 1970. The share residing in the Midwest and northeast has fallen from 52% to 38% over the past 50 years. This will affect congressional seats, federal funding and electoralcollege votes, all of which are apportioned to states by population size.

The movement of people will not only give certain places more national political clout: it will also reconfigure local politics. In the 2020 election, Democrats gained ground in Arizona and Georgia in large part because of the young, collegeeducated, nonwhite people moving there. The shifting politics of Arizona and Georgia received attention, but less noted is that “growing suburban places moved quite dramatically toward the Democratic Party”, says Jonathan Rodden, a politicalscience professor at Stanford. Traditionally Democrats have been at a disadvantage because so many of their voters are clustered in cities. Their spread outward into suburbs could determine the result of more races.

“The big question that everyone would like to answer is whether this is a shortterm reaction to some of the excesses of the Republican Party by relatively young, educated voters, or if it is a longerterm realignment of the suburbs,” Mr Rodden says. A countervailing political force is that some of the people who are moving into Texan, Floridian and Arizonan suburbs from California and the northeast consider themselves political refugees, fleeing badly run state and local governments. They may vote against Democratic candidates to prevent their new areas from turning into the places they left.

America is never stagnant. Towns, cities and suburbs will be transformed by their new inhabitants. The richness, diversity and creativity of cities will come to smaller places, and the country’s urbanrural divide should narrow. “The dispersing of millennials, minorities and immigrants means the country will have more in common than it did before,” predicts Mr Kotkin of Chapman University. That would be something to celebrate. n

Kentucky’s tornado The long road back

M AYFIELD, KENTUCKY Recovering from natural disasters is easier if you’re already strong

At the first Baptist Ministries Centre in downtown Mayfield, Kentucky, a huge cross used to be visible through a large window overlooking the crossroads. Now it stands, perilously, in the open air. The entire rest of the front of the building, as well as much of the roof, was torn off by a tornado on the night of December 10th, which flattened a large part of the rest of the town. On December 14th, the congregation were serving coffee and breakfast buns to passersby out of the shell. “It has been an experience”, said Debbie Fowler, a 68yearold parishioner whose son is the pastor. “We were so sick at heart to see it, it’s devastating.” But, she says, the town will come back. “It won’t look the same, but the people will be the same. This is a closeknit community”, she says.

The tornado that hit Mayfield was the worst to have hit America since one destroyed much of Joplin, Missouri, in 2011. As well as tearing up Mayfield, it wrecked buildings in five other states across the Midwest and South. By December 15th, 88 people were known to have been killed, 74 of whom were in Kentucky. Dozens more were still missing, while hundreds have been made homeless. Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s governor, described it as the “worst, most devastating, most deadly tornado event” in his state’s history. On December 15th Joe Biden visited Mayfield to survey the damage himself, and announced federal aid to cover the costs of rebuilding. And yet recovery from natural disasters is rarely easy. The population of New Orleans is still 20% lower today than it was before Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many smaller towns like Mayfield have struggled to retain population even without tornadoes. Will it really bounce back?

When your correspondent arrived, volunteers from all over Kentucky, and even further afield, had set up stalls to hand out food, water and other essentials. Fire departments were busy clearing the roads. Generators had been hauled in to provide power. “The town is not going to quit because of this,” says John Darnell, who drove in from his home in a neighbouring county to drop off supplies. “They’re too resourceful.” And yet volunteers rushing in is not the main determinant of how easily somewhere recovers. Sam Anselm, who was assistant city manager in Joplin when it was hit, says the town got a lot of donations of clothes and toys, and then had to find space to store them. “Really what we needed was a gift card or cheque”, he says.

What matters more is having a good plan, says Elaina Sutley, who studies disaster recovery at the University of Kansas. A wellorganised local government can marshall an enormous amount of federal and state resources. But smaller towns often do not have the ready expertise to work out which grants to apply for, or what to do with them. Political conflict can stifle the ability to use money well. “There is a window of opportunity that does not last very long after each disaster,” she says.

Sadly, as in so many things, a town’s existing wealth is an important factor. Where most residents affected are homeowners and decently insured, they can often recover quickly, by enlisting private sector resources to rebuild their homes. Poorer places, with lots of renters, are more likely to suffer permanently, as people whose homes are damaged leave. What you sometimes see, says Ms Sutley, is that “some pieces of the town look really great, and other parts get left behind.” Joplin has largely recovered, partly thanks to decent leadership, but also because its housing stock was wellinsured.

Whether Mayfield will thrive is yet to be seen. The median household income in the town is just $32,200, much lower than the national figure of $67,500. Poverty will prove a challenge. At a community centre shelter in Wingo, a town around 10 miles away, one evacuee, Evonda Murdock, says this is the second time she has been forced to move recently. A few months before, her landlord had evicted her and her son, forcing them to live in a hotel. “I don’t know what we are going to do now”, she says. America has an enormous amount of compassion when catastrophe arrives. But more daytoday support for the vulnerable would help too. n