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The state’s latest population projection presents a troubling outlook for Wisconsin over the next 25 years with a drop in youth numbers.
A new report from Forward Analytics explains the state’s demographic challenge with a look at the decline of Wisconsin’s under-18 population and a warning about what it means for the future: “fewer children today can portend fewer workers in 20 or 30 years.”
The state’s youth population has been dropping for a while. Forward Analytics, an arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association, notes in the 1990s, the under-18 population grew by nearly 80,000 largely thanks to migration into the state of young families with children. That trend reversed in the following decade with a drop of 29,000 kids and continued in 2010-20 with an even bigger drop of 58,000.
Forward Analytics notes 2024 Census figures show the trend continuing with another 40,000 fewer youth compared to 2020. If that continues, the drop for the overall decade would be 95,000.
The state’s schools and universities are already feeling the impact. Sixty-three percent of the 426 districts that existed in 2000 had fewer students by 2010 with 39% seeing drops of more than 10%. While that impact was largely felt in rural areas, it’s become more widespread. Forward Analytics found from 2010 to 2022, 70% of districts saw enrollments fall with 32% seeing drops of at least 10%.
Naturally, fewer kids results in fewer going off to college. Since 2007, in-state freshman enrollment at the Universities of Wisconsin has declined every year but two, dropping a total of 23%.
Forward Analytics notes some Wisconsin kids may be going off to college in other states, and there may be less interest in going to college in general than there once was.
With the drop, UW has been admitting more out-of-state students who pay higher out-of-state tuition rates. Wisconsin residents made up 68% of the new freshman class last year, down from 81% in 2007. But the growing share of out-of-state students at the system’s flagship Madison campus irritates some GOP lawmakers, and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, has questioned UW’s budget request for $855 million in new state aid when it’s a system “in decline.”
And those trends could lead to a ripple effect with fewer people aged 25-64 — the prime workforce years — which would present a challenge for employers to fill openings.
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