The state’s population fell by more than 10,000 in the year ended July 1, continuing a trend from 2017, state economist Eugene Tian said, citing population estimates released Thursday. At the same time, the Hawaiian elderly community is growing and a little more are living in poverty, although poverty has dropped for Hawaiians overall, according to data from the American Community Survey collected between 2016 and 2020 and published this month. The U.S. Census Bureau warns that new data from the American Research Community is less accurate than previous data due to the pandemic. Honolulu’s population declined between 2020 and 2021, but some counties such as Kauai and Hawaii saw their populations increase. Cory Lum / Civil Beat / 2021 Kendrick Leong, head of data research and analysis at the Hawaii Data Collaborative, says that only about 70% of people answered the American Community Survey in 2020 compared to more than 80% last year, and respondents were richer. That prompted data collectors to supplement survey responses with real estate tax records, federal tax data and information from the U.S. Postal Service, Long said. Justin Hong, an independent research consultant, said the result was that the 2016-2020 data “is probably more representative of a period before Covid than the Covid period”. However, many of the findings are consistent with known trends. The proportion of people aged 65 and over living in Hawaii increased by more than 40% between the 2006-2010 American Community Survey and the 2016-2020 Survey. In Maui, the figure was 67.3%. Kealiʻi Lopez, state director of the American Pensioners Association, said Hawaii has long had a rapidly aging population. He urged policymakers to “recognize that there is more we need to do as more people grow older and become the majority of the population.” That includes tackling the costs of long-term care, helping people save for retirement and overcoming community opposition to affordable housing for the elderly, said Lopez, who has been pushing for more legislation this year. “Policymakers and the like must stop knocking on the door,” Lopez said. “A long time has passed and the community as a whole, the state as a whole, must begin to pay attention.”
Kauai and Hawaii counties are developing
The U.S. Census Bureau last year reported that the state’s population grew by 7% from 2010 to 2020, but Tian, the state economist, said the state’s population has declined since 2017. Tian believes the downward trend is due to a combination of fewer births, more deaths and more people moving to the mainland, where food and shelter are more affordable. Nationwide, birth rates have dropped, and the U.S. Census Bureau has found that Covid-related deaths have contributed to a record number of counties reporting more births than births. But not every county saw its population shrink. As the populations of Honolulu and Maui counties decreased, the counties of Hawaii and Kauai increased. This may reflect domestic immigration patterns. Remote work has allowed some people living on the mainland to move to Hawaii, and although international migration has declined, so many people have moved inland between 2020 and 2021 that more counties nationwide have seen their populations grow rather than shrink. .
Financial Changes
The data revealed numerous economic and social changes for Hawaiians over the past decade. More people had health insurance between 2016 and 2020 than between 2011 and 2015. Both Medicaid and private health insurance through the Affordable Care Act market have expanded in the last decade. Homeowners in Hawaii have lost weight, which Tian believes may be related to lower interest rates that have allowed homeowners to refinance. Poverty fell in every state, including Hawaii, when comparing the 2016-2020 survey data with the 2011-2015 data. But in Hawaii, poverty has risen slightly for people over the age of 65, from 7.6% to 8.3%. Hong, an independent research consultant, believes that poverty in the community may be higher than reflected in the data, because the cessation of data collection in 2020 did not fully reflect the economic upheaval caused by Covid. “You are looking for a period of time that can really hide the recent changes,” Hong said of the 2016-2020 data. Incomes also increased, with nearly 49% of Hawaiian households earning $ 100,000 or more in the 2016-2020 survey compared with 43% in the 2011-2015 survey. The median household income in Hawaii increased from $ 75,810 in 2011-2015 to $ 83,173 in 2016-2020. Tian, the state economist, said Hawaii has consistently one of the highest family incomes in the country, but added that the state also has the largest household size, with many generations often living under the same roof. He believes that a better measure for comparison than the median household income is the per capita income – about $ 37,000 in the latest figures – which is closer to the national average of $ 35,384. Click here to explore new data. Civil Beat health coverage is supported by the Atherton Family Foundation, the Swayne Family Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation, and Papa Ola Lokahi.
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