We’ve collected all our work on Virginia’s changing demography in one place; find it here.
Second of a three-part series. Find part one here.
One of the biggest success stories in Virginia in recent years has been Danville. Here’s a city that saw its economy collapse a quarter-century ago and is now coming back. This is an observation confirmed by demography: After losing population for three decades in a row (and four of the last five), Danville is now gaining population again.
If you believe Ronald Reagan’s old saying that “people vote with their feet,” then the evidence is clear: Danville is winning again.
A new release of data from the Internal Revenue Service, when matched up against Census Bureau figures, gives us more insight into the population changes in Danville. The IRS data (which tracks where people file their tax returns from) suggests that we haven’t seen an increase in the number of people moving into Danville. Rather, what we’re seeing is fewer people moving out, leaving Danville with more net population growth.
There are two ways to explain this. One is that Danville is becoming “stickier,” more likely to retain the people it already has, presumably because they’re happier there and see more job opportunities.
The other is that Danville is defying national trends by continuing to attract new residents at the same rate, even as moves are falling elsewhere.
Of course, there’s a third way to explain this: Both trends could be true at the same time.
Either way, Danville stands out for having some unusual population trends, which are helping to drive its comeback.
First, let’s look at the IRS data, which, by definition, is limited to people who file tax returns and any dependents they claim. It’s also current only through 2023 because, well, that’s how the government rolls.
We see several things over this time span. First, Danville’s population trends turned around in 2021. Before then, more people moved out than moved in. Since then, more have moved in than out.
However, the number of people moving in has been pretty consistent (except for 2015, which was low on both scales). What changed is the number of people moving out, which peaked in 2017 and has declined every year since then. The population outflows in 2023 were 37.2% lower than they were six years before that. For another comparison, the average outflows from 2021 onward are 18% lower than the average outflows before then. Something has happened to persuade people not to move out of town.
Part of that something may be rooted in national trends. Fewer people are moving, period. American mobility is now at its lowest rate since the U.S. Census Bureau started tracking such things in 1948.
There are many reasons for this declining mobility, probably not all of them well understood, but among the reasons most cited: Young people move more than older people, and, because of declining birth rates, we have fewer young people. High housing costs make it harder for anyone to move, period. The rise of remote work, a recent phenomenon, may have slowed moves overall because some people no longer need to move to take a new job out of town (although it may also have encouraged some to move to places where they want to live as long as they can keep their job, so this may work both ways).
All we know is that it’s not the same America that the French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville saw in the 1830s. In his landmark “Democracy in America,” he wrote about how much Americans liked to move. “In the United States, a man carefully builds a dwelling in which to pass his declining years, and he sells it while the roof is being laid,” de Tocqueville wrote. “He settles in a place from which he departs soon after so as to take his changing desires elsewhere.”
That’s all the philosophy you’ll get today. The point is that Danville’s population trends are unusual.
Even though fewer people are moving nationally, people continue to move into Danville from somewhere else at roughly the same rate. Over the past three years, Danville has seen an average of 2,024 move-ins; in the previous eight years, it was 2,085.
Big picture: Since the pandemic, the in-migration to Danville has continued at basically the same rate, while the out-migration has dropped by 18%.
Whatever is happening in Danville spills into neighboring Pittsylvania County. Pittsylvania has much the same pattern. Its in-migration has stayed essentially the same, while out-migration has dropped 10% since the pandemic.
To see how unusual this is, let’s look at some other communities.
Martinsville is always a good comparison: close by in Southside, went through the same economic trauma as Danville did. While Danville’s in-migration rate has stayed consistent, Martinsville’s has dropped by 6.7% since the pandemic, while its out-migration rate has dropped 9.2% — about half what Danville’s has.
Now let’s look at some nearby cities.
Salem’s trends are about the same as Martinsville’s — the number of people moving in has dropped 6.1% since the pandemic, while the number of those moving out has dropped 7.4%
Roanoke comes in with similar trendlines but worse numbers. The number of people moving into Roanoke since the pandemic is down 11.0%, while the number moving out has dropped 9.5%. I’m probably overdue for a reminder that people moving in or out is only half of what drives population trends — births and deaths constitute the rest. That means it’s possible for a community to see people moving in but still lose population if deaths are high enough. That’s not the case with Roanoke, though. Roanoke is seeing people move out at a rate similar to what we’ve seen in Pittsylvania County, Martinsville and Salem. What’s notable is how the number of people moving into the city has dropped by a double-digit rate. Why aren’t more people choosing to move to Roanoke? That may be a discussion for another day.
Finally, we come to Lynchburg (I’m sticking to cities relatively close to Danville), which has unusual population trends all its own. While other cities have seen their population outflows decline against a national backdrop of fewer moves, Lynchburg’s out-migration has remained constant over the past decade. The pandemic made no difference whatsoever. That would seem to be a bad thing: Why are people continuing to move out of the Hill City when moves nationally are slowing down? Maybe that’s a function of Lynchburg having so many college students who, by definition, are going to move away. This data can’t speak to that. All we know is that the rate at which people move out of Lynchburg isn’t changing.
On the other hand, Lynchburg is the only city in this grouping that has seen the number of people moving into the community increase. It hasn’t changed much — up 3.0% since the pandemic — but an increase is still an increase. Roanoke, which has seen its inflow slow by double-digit rates, might want to find out what Lynchburg is doing to draw people, but I digress.
All this brings us back to Danville, which continues to stand out.
Danville has kept its in-migration rate stay pretty even while others (except Lynchburg) have seen theirs fall.
More strikingly, Danville has reduced the number of people moving out far more than any other city.
Finally, there’s this: The pandemic was a turning point for Danville.
From 2013-2023, Roanoke has seen more people move out than move in every year.
Lynchburg has seen more people move out than move in every one of those years except one. Martinsville saw more people move out than move in for nine of those 11 years. Salem’s about half and half: six years with net in-migration, five years with net out-migration.
The point is, while the numbers in those cities may have changed from year to year, the trendlines didn’t.
In Danville, though, the pandemic appears to have made a difference — or, perhaps, other factors kicked in at the same time. Up through 2020, Danville always saw more people moving out than moving in. From 2021 onwards, it’s always seen more people moving in than moving out.
When city officials proclaim Danville as “the comeback city,” it’s not just hype. These are some of the numbers that support that claim.
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