Southern, Western cities lure most young, single college grads

? Young, single, college-educated people flocked to Southern and Western cities during the late 1990s, helping to spur their rapid growth and booming economies, the Census Bureau reported Monday.

Between 1995 and 2000, Naples, Fla.; Las Vegas; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; and Portland, Ore., were the major cities that saw the greatest growth among single people 25 to 39 who had college diplomas, according to the bureau’s first-ever report on the subject. Rankings were based only on people who moved into the metro area from another U.S. address.

Robert Lang, demographer with the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech University, said such residents helped spur the economy because they generally earned good salaries and spent more freely than older, married people.

Single, college-educated residents also may be more likely to create jobs by opening their own businesses, Lang said. These are the people who go “where you have opportunity, but when they get there, they also create opportunity,” he said.

Jack Wert, executive director of the Naples-Marco Island- Everglades Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the area saw an influx of younger adults mostly because software and high-tech companies opened in the region.

Metro areas in the Northeast and Midwest were the least likely to draw young, single college graduates. Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland were the only three of the 20 most-populated cities that lost them. Growth in St. Louis was relatively flat.

Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth all saw big gains, as did the area of San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Calif. — the center of the high-tech boom of the late 1990s. However, it has some of the highest housing costs in the country, which has forced many couples and families to move out.

The Census Bureau ranked metropolitan areas according to how many single, college-educated people 25 to 39 moved in from another metro area between 1995 and 2000, and then compared it to the number of people in that group who lived there in 1995.

So, in Naples’ case, that region gained 483 people for every 1,000 who already were there, for a top-ranked rate of 483.

It was followed by Las Vegas (409); Charlotte, N.C.-Gastonia, N.C.-Rock Hill, S.C. (344); Atlanta (282); and Portland-Salem, Ore. (268).

By comparison, the Philadelphia area had a net migration rate of minus-17 — the lowest of the 20 major cities.

The report was based on responses to the 2000 census long form distributed to one in six U.S. households.