Sharper decline in number of students in rural Alaska suggests rural population is shrinking

As Alaska officials attempt to determine how many rural residents have migrated to the state's only urban area, in and around Anchorage, they are trying to find out how many students have left rural schools. State researchers ... report that rural schools lost 1,802 students in the last five years," writes Alex DeMarban of the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks, but there have been some problems in using these statistics.

In the same period, the number of urban students declined by 204, and one would expect that number to have risen if rural students were migrating. A decrease in the birth rate is a likely factor. "The Alaska birth rate has fallen in recent years, dropping from 24.4 for every 1,000 residents in the 1980s to 15.4 in 2005-2006," DeMarban writes.

The review of student populations is part of a larger effort to determine at overall population trends in Alaska. What the rural student numbers clearly suggest is that the state's rural population, 34 percent of the total at the 2000 census, is in decline. (Read more)

An earlier blog here, citing an article from the Anchorage Daily, found that much of the data about the migration from Alaska's rural school population has been exaggerated.