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As a result of COVID-19, higher education institutions across the U.S. had to quickly transition from in-person to online courses for the Spring 2020 semester. In Virginia, the number of students completing coursework entirely online jumped from 120,000 to over half a million in a matter of weeks. Colleges and universities are now preparing scenarios […]

Lower mortgage rates and a rise in concentrated wealth nationwide has resulted in more people buying second homes. With a multitude of natural, historical, and cultural amenities, Virginia is an attractive location to spend leisure time and a prime location to purchase a vacation home. Within the Commonwealth, the percentage of homes in an area […]

The 2020 Census is currently underway, and its accuracy relies on two equally important processes: complete data collection, and accurate data reporting. Complete data collection (in the words of the Census Bureau, “counting everyone once, only once, and in the right place”) is essential to an effective decennial census, which is estimated to cost $15.6 […]

This morning the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia released its 2019 population estimates for Virginia’s counties and cities. The estimates show Virginia’s population inched up to 8,535,519 in 2019, after passing 8.5 million in 2018. Though Virginia has added over half a million new residents since the last census in 2010, population […]

There is an axiom in the technology sector, known as Amara’s law, which states that the short term impact of a new technology will typically be overestimated while the long term impact is usually underestimated. This is particularly true when considering the impact the internet was expected to have on where people choose to live. […]

It is important that kids from economically-disadvantaged families have access to good schools so that they will have a better outlook for employment, income, and overall wellbeing than their parents’ generation. My first post on this topic provided an introduction to the interrelation between an area’s school proficiency and its cost of housing. By giving […]

Political punditry and polls often form the basis for predicting election results, but rarely are they consistent or comprehensive. Given the importance of state-level voting, and the central role played by the Electoral College in the democratic process, projecting the number of eligible voters in each state may add value to understanding the November 2020 […]

School quality is one of the most important considerations for a family when choosing where to live. However, a more critical aspect in deciding home location is affordability. More often than not, these two pieces don’t line up. If lower-income households could make housing location decisions based on school quality alone rather than affordability, they […]

In 1998, President Bill Clinton startled an audience of students by making this statement:“In a little more than 50 years there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time.” While few people in 1998 were aware […]

When people hear that “Northern Virginia drives population growth in the commonwealth,” or “rural communities are losing population,” they immediately think of large numbers of people moving into Northern Virginia or many residents leaving rural counties. Is this true? In this article, we examine county-to-county (including independent cities) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) migration data, one […]