The author of the Brookings Institution study referenced above does not know about Kansas City proper, or more specifically about downtown Kansas City. The Downtown Council itself apparently can’t provide worthwhile numbers either. Trying to piece together the data requires investing a lot of time and resources going through Census data at the county level. Until someone does that in 2019, we can rely on a 2016 paper for the Show-Me Institute by Wendell Cox, “Kansas City—Genuinely World Class.”

In Figure 3 on page 6, Cox offers us the chart at the top of this post. As you can see, populations have not grown in the urban parts of the Kansas City but rather in the areas outside the city proper. In fact, the urban and near-in suburbs are shrinking. This is expected to continue. Cox writes:

According to the Mid-America Regional Council, population growth will continue to be concentrated in the suburban counties. Between 2010 and 2040, it is projected that approximately 45 percent of the population growth will be in Johnson County, which will make up the bulk of the 55 percent of metropolitan area growth that is projected to occur in the Kansas suburbs. The Missouri counties are projected to constitute 45 percent of the metropolitan area growth, with Cass County accounting for 18 percent and Jackson County for 11 percent (Figure 4).

Lots of organizations spend a lot of money trying to attract people and jobs to Kansas City. All them have an incentive to show that all that money—in many cases tax dollars—is well spent so that their budgets will be expanded. Successes seem rare and the data aren’t promising. But if city leaders are serious about attracting residents and jobs, we need to have a serious conversation about what is working and what is not.

The post Follow-up on Kansas City Population Trends appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

William Frey of the Brookings Institution just published a report entitled “How migration of millennials and seniors has shifted since the Great Recession,” and it has some promising numbers for Kansas City. In the report, Frey writes:

Another feature of young adult migration magnets is their location in the South and West “Sun Belt” region where all except three of the top 20 magnets are located. (Those three—Minneapolis-St. Paul, Columbus, and Kansas City—are among the most highly educated Midwest areas for millennials.)

…Today’s young adults, now encompassing those in the prime millennial ages, show a penchant for “educated places”—including Denver and Seattle—as well as more affordable areas like Minneapolis and Kansas City with pre-recession hot spots like Riverside, Phoenix, and Atlanta showing reduced appeal. 

Frey, as do most researchers, uses the term Kansas City broadly, to encompass an entire metropolitan statistical area (MSA). The Kansas City MSA stretches from Independence to Lawrence and includes 14 counties. Its population is 2.1 million, compared to the under 500,000 within the political boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri itself. Knowing whether a statistic describes a city or a metropolitan area is important, lest you conclude, as some would have you believe, that Kansas City gets 25 million visitors a year. It doesn’t.

It’s important to remember the Brookings Institution numbers on millennial migration speak to the broader MSA. Frey doesn’t report how much of the growth is taking place in downtown Kansas City, or how much is taking place in Olathe and Overland Park, two places recently listed as top destinations for millennials. Frey doesn’t report it because he doesn’t know it; I asked him.

As has happened before, it is possible that reports like this will be set upon by groups like the Downtown Council and the City of Kansas City as proof that the billions of dollars spent subsidizing wealthy developers in downtown Kansas City are bearing fruit. But until we know migration numbers within the MSAs, all that optimism is premature and skepticism is warranted.

Below: a map containg data from Frey’s analysis.

The post Some Promising Numbers About Millennials in Kansas City. Maybe. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We’ve argued this basic fact for years, and some of the better-known pipers have even changed their tune (but not without charging the townspeople nonetheless). According to a recent study published by SmartAsset based on Pew Research data, Kansas City, Missouri, is not in the top 25 destinations for millennials. Overland Park, Kansas, ranked 14th.

More noteworthy, SmartAsset previously released a study indicating that two Kansas City suburbs ranked in the top 25 places in the United States where millennials are buying homes. Olathe, KS ranked first (!) and Overland Park 11th in the entire country. Kansas City, Missouri—despite our entertainment district, Sprint Center, streetcar, and subsidized corporate headquarters and high-rise luxury apartment buildings—did not appear anywhere in the top 25.

None of this should be surprising. We know that millennials are looking for exactly what previous generations wanted: homes in the suburbs, cars, and good schools. Yet Kansas City leaders persist in telling us we’re a millennial magnet. We aren’t.

There is no shortcut to growing a city; no magical policy that can reverse national demographic trends. A better investment, as Show-Me Institute analysts have argued for years, is for government’s action to be broad and neutral: keep taxes low for everyone, maintain infrastructure, deliver necessary city services, and ensure quality education. Maybe those aren’t as appealing as shiny new construction projects, but they are more successful.

The post Millennials *Still* Prefer the Kansas City Suburbs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The 25-million-visitor claim comes from the 2016 Tourism Economics report prepared for VisitKC by Longwoods International and the U.S. Travel Association. A copy of the report is available at the link at the bottom of this post. The study defines Kansas City as “a five county region in Kansas and Missouri—Johnson and Wyandotte in Kansas; Clay, Jackson, and Platte in Missouri.”

This means the 25 million visitors visited not only Kansas City, Missouri, but Kansas City, Kansas; Overland Park; Olathe; and Independence. It includes the Cabela’s at the Legends Outlet, which for a while was the number one tourism attraction in the entire state of Kansas, and since then has only added attractions such as Sporting KC’s stadium.

The report divides visitor spending by the five different counties, with Jackson County, the home of Kansas City (and Independence) receiving just under half. It is reasonable to conclude that only half of the 25 million visitors are coming to Jackson County—and even fewer may be visiting Kansas City proper. After all, the five-county area has a population of 1.8 million, while Kansas City has only 480,000.

For an administration that talks about dealing only in facts, the 25 million visitors claim is misleading at best. People are right to be skeptical of such big claims, and city leaders should do a better job of ensuring their accuracy.

The post Tourism: When Kansas City Is Not Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Suburbanization, whether between or within states, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Lots of factors are considered when people decide to move, and among those considerations is taxes. And to be clear, tax policy matters not just when taxes are reduced or repealed, but also when bad tax policies persist. And a bad, bad tax that both Kansas City and Saint Louis have had for a long time is the earnings tax. As our own Joe Haslag concluded in a policy study way back in 2006:

[T]he growth rate in [the modeled] economy where there is no city earnings tax is 1.72 percent, while the growth rate in the economy with a city earnings tax is 1.66 percent. Thus, a city earnings tax results in the growth rate falling by 0.06 percentage points on an annual basis.

That might seem small, but it can result in large differences in the size of the economy. Suppose that the initial value of the economy’s income is $78 billion. (This is the 2002 personal income level in the Missouri part of the St. Louis metropolitan area). After a generation (25 years), the no-tax economy would be $1.78 billion larger than the economy with a one percent tax rate. That is a difference of 1.5 percent.

Indeed, tax policy can be a contributing (rather than motivating) factor in where people live and grow their businesses. Even small tax policy mistakes can be economically destructive for a city — just more quietly and over a longer horizon. If you hurt your city’s capacity to grow economically, you truly hurt your city’s future.

Alas, unlike Iocane powder, it’s very difficult to build up an immunity to destructive taxes over time. And obviously, suburbs developed around Kansas City on the Missouri side as they did on the Kansas side. But the fact that Jackson County lost “only” a half billion dollars of Missouri income to Johnson County before Kansas enacted significant tax cuts in 2012 (and 2013) should be cold, cold comfort to Missouri tax cut opponents. Tax policy was a factor considered in moving from Missouri to Kansas before; it may be the preeminent factor considered today. Where people retire is a thornier proposition bound up with both economic and non-economic considerations, but one thing is certain — Kansas Citians haven’t moved, and won’t be moving, en masse to Olathe, Kan., for its sun-kissed shores. Will they move there for its tax climate? Quite possibly. And that’s the problem.

On a more personal note: I have heard from businessmen and businesswomen across Kansas City about the pressure longtime-Missouri businesses are under to consider a move to Kansas — motivated almost entirely by the new taxing environment there. Businesses already are asking the question, “Is it time to leave Kansas City?” I cannot stress enough how serious their concerns are. How long can Kansas City and the state of Missouri afford to ignore them before risking a plunge off the Cliffs of Insanity?

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