The Burgh

As Deaths Outpace Births, Cities Adjust

PITTSBURGH — This city has passed a grim demographic milestone: More people are dying here than are being born.

What demographers call a natural decrease has been occurring for years in tiny rural towns and in some retirement meccas in the South. But the phenomenon is relatively new in metropolitan areas in the Northeast, the Rust Belt of the Middle West and Appalachia.

Hospitals are closing obstetrics wards and converting them to acute care. Local governments and other social service providers are adjusting to the emergence of entire neighborhoods where the average age is soaring, and private foundations are awarding scholarships to retain students and attract new ones.

In Pittsburgh, public school enrollment plummeted from about 70,000 two decades ago to about 30,000 and continues shrinking by about 1,000 a year....

In the 1990s, births in metropolitan Pittsburgh outnumbered deaths by 11,500. Since this decade began, however, nearly 25,000 more people have died here than have been born. Health care has replaced steel as Pittsburgh’s biggest industry. Parochial and public schools have closed.

Is there any truth to the rumor that you were were an idealistic youth full of hope and optimism for the future before you moved to Pittsburgh? 

GILFs

I know a woman who was a grandmother at 32. Does that change your position? (For the record, it wouldn't for me.)