Many things affect a school (or district’s) enrollment, but the most important is simply how many children live there.
In Milwaukee, recent birth trends point to a future of dwindling class sizes, beginning in elementary school and working their way up through the higher grades. Absent a spike in the birth rate or a big change in migration, the three sectors—district, charter, and private—will find themselves fighting over a shrinking pie.
Across the 1990s, the number of babies born fell by 13%. Then, the trend stabilized, even growing slightly, until the Great Recession. 773 fewer babies were born in 2010 than 2009, and annual declines continued after that. From 2009 to 2019, the number of births fell by 17%.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a drop in births similar to the Great Recession a decade prior. Births fell by 540 in 2020, 439 in 2021, and 358 in 2022. Losses stabilized in 2023, when the preliminary count shows 7,905 births, still 14% lower than prior to the pandemic.
During the 2010s, schools across all sectors reaped the benefits of Milwaukee’s stable birthrate during the 2000s. Many of the twelfth-graders who graduated this year were born in 2006. Since then, the annual number of births has dropped by 31%.
In the next graph, I compare the number of first graders entering any school in Milwaukee (district, charter, or private) with the number of babies born six years prior. Subsequent first grade enrollment is lower than births because more young families move out of Milwaukee than move into it. However, the size of the gap has remained fairly steady across the 19 school years for which I have data.
In every school year, the number of first graders enrolling has been 21% to 15% lower than the number of babies born 6 years ago. In other words, first grade enrollment has always been between 79% and 85% of the total births 6 years prior. In 2023-24, the figure was 83%, and in 2022-23, 81%.
Because of this stable relationship between births and subsequent first grade enrollment, we can use recent births to forecast the size of future first grade classes.
In the 2023-24 school year, 7,956 kids enrolled in first grade at any school within city limits. Six years prior, about 9,568 kids were born in the city. The children who will enroll in first grade in 2029-30 have already been born. In Milwaukee, they number 7,902.
If Milwaukee retains young families at the best rate from our recent past, it would still mean a decline of 16% in the number of first graders over the next 6 years. Retaining families at the worst rate would result in a 22% reduction. The simple linear model I use in the above graph predicts a 19% drop.
Again, these predictions are not based on a forecast of future birth rates; they are based on the number of babies who have already been born. Some combination of retaining more young families and attracting more migrants (domestic and international) could alter this trajectory. But the current path clearly points to a drop of nearly 20% in the number of first graders by the end of the decade. That decline will then work its way through elementary, middle, and high schools over the 2030s.
Elections for the Wisconsin Assembly haven’t seen much drama for a decade. The decline in ticket splitting among voters across the state, combined with the rock-solid gerrymander drawn in 2011, meant that scarcely any seats changed hands between parties. The “least-change” map adopted in 2022 tipped a few more seats toward the GOP but mainly reaffirmed the electoral status quo.
The new state legislative maps drawn by Governor Evers and passed in early 2024 bear little resemblance to those used previously. Most Wisconsinites live in a new district. WPR reports that “at least 44 state representatives and senators will run in new districts.”
With so much up in the air, I wanted to calculate election statistics from some of Wisconsin’s previous, relatively un-gerrymandered maps. How many seats usually changed hands between the parties? How often did incumbents lose? How common were open seats?
First, here is a graph showing the seats won by each party in each November general election. I begin in 1972, because that was the first year when the Assembly had 99 members (before that, it had 100).
Democrats held a majority of the Assembly from the 1970 election until 1994. Then, Republicans controlled it until 2008. After the 2008 election, Democrats briefly controlled both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion. The Tea Party wave in 2010 flipped all chambers to Republican control. The balance of power in the Assembly has changed little since then.
The next series of graphs show selected election statistics for each general election to the Assembly.
The number of uncontested seats—where just 1 party fields a candidate—has bounced around. But it has generally been lower in the 2010s than the 1990s and 2000s.
Incumbents are rarely defeated. Under the maps in use from 2012-2020, a total of 8 incumbents lost to a non-incumbent challenger.
The number of open seats (with no incumbent running) has followed a natural rhythm. In most years, around 15 races feature no incumbent, but every decade or so the number of open seats jumps to around a quarter of the chamber.
The number of seats flipping between the parties has rarely been high, but it was especially low during the 2010s. This statistic can only be calculated when the district boundaries are used in sequential elections.
There were 396 general elections for an assembly seat from 2014 to 2020. Only 7 resulted in a flip. That’s a flip rate of 1.8%.
From 2004-2010, 35 seats flipped, a rate of 8.8%.
From 1994-2000, 17 seats flipped, a rate of 4.3%.
From 1986-1990, 16 seats flipped, a rate of 5.4%. (Both the 1982 and 1984 elections featured new districts).
From 1974-1980, 31 seats flipped, a rate of 7.8%.
Prior to 1972, the Wisconsin Assembly contained 100 seats. This graph shows the partisan composition of each legislature from 1885 through 1971. This data is slightly different than the figures shown above, because it shows party membership of legislators in December of each odd-numbered year. The data I discuss above shows the party composition of the winners in each even-numbered general election.
The Republican Party overwhelmingly dominated the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Wisconsin. Democrats held a majority after only 5 elections during the entire period from 1885 to 1971. During the 1920s, Republicans held almost all the seats in the Assembly and the Socialist Party typically won more seats than the Democrats.
The official census count occurs just once every ten years, and it’s out of date by the time it gets released.
The last census was officially conducted on April 1, 2020, so it missed essentially all the population changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But each year, the U.S. Census Bureau also releases “intercensal” population estimates. These are based on carefully collected administrative records (births, deaths, tax returns, etc.), and they give us the best look at how our current population is changing. The estimates cover 12-month periods beginning on July 1. The latest data covers the year from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.
The pandemic and its aftermath is still the big story in this data. Cities across the country shrank. Some, like Detroit, have begun to grow. Despite Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s well-publicized goal of “1 million Milwaukeeans,” the city’s population recovery has yet to begin.
The latest estimates show positive signs for Wisconsin, but continued struggles for Milwaukee, relative to our midwestern peers. Wisconsin has largely returned to pre-pandemic form, while Milwaukee County is continuing to shrink at twice the rate of the 2010s.
Wisconsin added 20,000 net new residents from July 2022 to July 2023, a growth rate of 0.35%, which is practically identical to the state’s average growth rate during the previous decade. That growth was nearly double the state’s increase of 11,000 in 2022, which came on the heels of a 17,000-person loss in the first year of the pandemic.
Population change can be broken down into two components — net migration and natural change (births minus deaths). The next graph shows why each state grew or shrank over the past three years. Wisconsin’s 2023 growth rate falls below Minnesota and Indiana but above Michigan and Iowa. Illinois is still shrinking badly.
Each state has followed a different trajectory.
Wisconsin had slightly more deaths than births in 2021 and 2022, before flipping to slightly more births in 2023. The bigger change has come from improving migration numbers. The state lost 16,000 net migrants in 2021 but gained 15,000 in 2022 and 19,000 in 2023.
Michigan has followed a similar trajectory as Wisconsin, but with more negative natural increase and slightly less migration.
Minnesota’s net migration has bounced around over the past few years, but its strong birth rates have kept it from shrinking much.
Iowa is close to flat—but slightly positive—in both natural change and net migration.
Illinois has maintained slightly positive natural change, but it gets hammered on net migration. A net of more than 100,000 people left the state in both 2021 and 2022. The outbound tide slowed to 43,000 in 2023, but Illinois remains the only state in this set to have negative net migration.
Indiana has attracted more than 20,000 net new residents in each of the past 3 years—some of them, doubtlessly, former Illinoisans.
Milwaukee County’s population fell by an estimated 1,800 during the 12-month period ending July 2023. That was an improvement over the previous two years, when the population fell by 6,200 and 14,300, respectively. Still, the county shrank by 0.2% in 2023, compared with an average annual decline of less than 0.1% throughout the 2010s.
The maps below show components of population change for each county.
The strongest position is in the top left map, which shows counties with more births than deaths and positive net migration. It includes the counties surrounding Indianapolis and the Twin Cities—though notably not any of those cities themselves. The growth emanating (though not shared by) the Twin Cities is so strong that it reaches as far as Eau Claire, Wis. Other areas in Wisconsin in this strong position include Dane and Marathon counties, the Fox Valley, and the greater La Crosse area.
Only a handful of counties have negative migration but enough of a positive birth rate to keep growing nonetheless. The largest in this category is Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis. In Wisconsin, they include Clark, Lafayette, and Trempealeau counties.
Many more counties have aging populations, resulting in negative natural change, but enough in-migration to create population growth. Broadly speaking, this includes a great swathe across northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Perhaps the remote work boom is finally creating the conditions for population growth across the Northwoods.
If the healthiest counties grow from births and migration, then the most troubled counties are shrinking for both reasons. These counties — which have more deaths than births and more leavers than comers — are found most commonly in rural Illinois and Iowa. In Wisconsin they include just Columbia, Crawford, Juneau, and Jackson counties.
Seven of the region’s largest 10 counties fall into the next category — where natural change is positive, but offset by out-migration. To put it reductively, people seem to have kids in these counties, then they leave. This status includes Milwaukee County; Cook, Kenosha, Lake, and DuPage counties in the Chicago metro; Wayne and Oakland counties in the Detroit metro; and Marion County (containing Indianapolis).
The final category, positive migration but an even larger negative natural change, occurs mainly in rural counties — particularly in Illinois.
The Census Bureau further estimates municipality population by tracking new housing unit construction and allocating the county-level population estimate into each town based on the average household size in the 2020 census. Based on this methodology, Milwaukee city’s population fell by 2,200 in 2023 to a new low of 561,400. The most significant growth came in Oak Creek, which likely added about 1,100 new residents. Most of the remaining municipalities are estimated to have shrunk slightly.
Milwaukee’s decline of 2,200 is an improvement over its loss of 2,900 in 2022 and pandemic-fueled drop of over 10,000 in 2021. But Milwaukee’s rate of decline in 2023 was still tied with Rockford, Ill., for the worst among the region’s 15 largest cities.
Milwaukee’s rate of change since the 2020 census is second-worst, trailing only Chicago. Madison, on the other hand, had the highest rate of growth in 2023 and the second highest since the pandemic (after Fort Wayne).
Most of the 15 largest municipalities in Wisconsin have shrunk since the 2020 census, with the exceptions of Madison, Eau Claire, and Janesville. But all of these cities do show signs of improvement in 2023. Eau Claire has shown particularly robust growth, passing Waukesha to become the state’s seventh largest city in the latest estimates.
By comparing Wisconsin with this set of neighboring states, I hope to better place our demographic situation in context. The bright spots in Wisconsin extend well beyond Madison. Many regions surrounding smaller cities like Eau Claire, Wausau, and the Fox Valley are doing quite well. The rural Northwoods is attracting enough migration to offset the natural decline of its aging population. Our rural communities are in a much healthier place than those of Illinois or Iowa.
Still, even if Wisconsin’s outlook seems better than Illinois’, Milwaukee nonetheless appears to be on the same trajectory as Chicago. In both, the population has fallen by about 3% since the pandemic began. The culprit is the same. The birth rate in each city is positive, but more people choose to move away than to move in.
