Census shows Chesco is wise, healthy and wealthy
According to survey data, the county is the leader of the pack in income, health insurance, and higher education
Chester County government officials and politicians frequently like to point out that their home is “the healthiest, the wealthiest, and the best educated county in the state.”
Figures released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau in the new demographic and socioeconomic report for every community in United States – the 2012-2016 American Community Survey — show they are not speaking with hyperbole.
According to the survey data, the county of Rebecca Lukens, Andrew Wyeth, Bayard Rustin, and M. Night Shyamalan, among others, tops the list in several categories that would make it the leader in income, health insurance, and higher education.
Southeastern Pennsylvania remained the region of the state with the highest median household incomes during 2012 to
2016. Chester ($88,995), Montgomery ($81,902), Bucks ($79,559), and Delaware ($66,576) counties had the highest median household incomes across the state. Forest County ($36,594) had the lowest median household income followed closely by Philadelphia ($39,770).
Eight counties in Pennsylvania had 90 percent or more of their 18 to 64-yearold residents having only private insurance, with Chester (94.4 percent), Bucks (94.1 percent), and Montgomery (93.6 percent) highest among them during 2012 to 2016. Four counties had at least one in four residents age 18 to 64 years with only
Public insurance: Philadelphia (26.4 percent), Fayette (22.5 percent), Clearfield (21.
0 percent), and Mifflin (20.0 percent).
Meanwhile, Chester (50.2 percent), Montgomery (47.5 percent), Centre (42.4 percent) had the highest shares of their population with Bachelor’s degrees or higher during 2012 to 2016.
“This does not come as a complete shock to us,” said commissioners’ Chairwoman Michelle Kichline in an interview last month about the Census figures and what they mean to county government. “This is a continuance of a trend we have seen for a number of years in Chester County. There is something of a synergy here.”
Kichline, who was chosen by her colleagues on the three-member commissioners board to remain in the chairwoman’s position for 2018, said that the combination of high income and well-educated residents, however, does not exist in a vacuum, an island of prosperity surrounded by destitution. It was the culmination of a regional growth for southeastern Pennsylvania that combines Philadelphia’s big city attention with the surrounding counties’ quality of life attractiveness.
Recently, it was disclosed that the Philadelphia region had made a bid for the location of a newAmazon headquarters, with the county joining in the race.
“One of the reasons we get talked about is that when you are successful as a region, you get national and international attention,” Kichline said. She pointed to the county’s “visionary” effort to preserve open space at the same time as it developed economically as the “backdrop” for its place in the state’s top economy.
But if you were thinking that this position of wealth, health, and educational achievement might put the county’s leaders on some sort of tax and spend spree for pet public projects — more parks, libraries, health clinics, transportation systems, etc. — you would be wrong. Kichline said the commissioners have no plans now to step away fromthe partnerships it has forged with private entities to provide service benefits for its residents.
In December, the commissioners adopted a $526.1 million budget for 2018 that reduces overall spending, and contains no new capital projects. The budgetmaintains the county’s current real estate tax rate of 4.369 mills that is expected to equal a median tax payment by property owners of $729.40 on property whose assessed value is $166,950.
“We work very closely with private partnerships,” she said in the interview, in which she was joined by county department heads associatedwith demographics and development — Planning Commission Executive Director BrianO’Leary and Department of Community Development Patrick Bokovitch.
“One of the reasons that why we can keep taxes low and provide serves is that we look toward nonprofit and private (enterprises for those benefits), and we have been very successful at that,” she said. Kichline is among the greatest boosters of VISTA 2025, the private-public effort by the Chester County Economic Council, whose “fundamental premise is that progress and preservation are complementary elements of a strategy that will support economic healthwhile maintaining the ‘sense of place’” that makes Chester County so attractive to residents and businesses.
The challenge in the Census demographics, said O’Leary, is to “plan for growth” that willmaintain economic vitality and quality of life benefits.
What he said he estimates the countywill see in the coming years is a twofold increase in the number of older residents, and younger ones.
“We think we will see a lot of millennials coming to Chester County,” he said. “As people begin to form families, we will see a movement into the county.” That means providing housing for newresidents as the overall population grows above its current 512,000 or higher.
Thatmeans developing a plan like LandScapes3, the county’s award-winning vision for the future of its communities that is underway now. LandScapes seeks to diversify where new residents will live and where open land will be preserved, and what kind of economy is supported here.
Bokovitch said that as department heads, he and O’Leary “are all trying to be aware of (the challenges) and come up with new initiatives. Where are the trends and the data pointing to, andhowcanweprovide for them?”
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.