Demographics

Until recently, the Heartland’s immigrant legacy lay largely obscured — displaced urban ethnic enclaves, abandoned synagogues and discarded German-language newspapers.  read more »

Popular culture and academia alike are quick to celebrate the vibrant social life of urban spaces while lamenting the sprawling emptiness and privacy of rural and suburban America.  read more »

I’ve written in the past about Columbus, Indiana and its patriarch, J. Irwin Miller. As I said in the Atlantic, Columbus is the Rust Belt city that never rusted. It’s basically the only small manufacturing city I know of in the Midwest that never went through a real decline period.  read more »

Last spring, the COVID-19 pandemic caused perhaps the worst job losses since the Great Depression. The decrease in the labor force participation rate — from 63.3% to 61.3% — has been steeper than that seen in the Great Recession  read more »

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the world economy in ways that will be debated by pundits and future historians for decades to come. Yet, as hard as it is to predict a disrupted future accurately, the pandemic (not to mention its probable successors) looks likely to produce clear economic winners and losers.  read more »

The Heartland continues to experience an influx of Hispanic immigrant workers, as seen in the last decade. Hispanic populations increased more than three times as fast as the national population from 2010 to 2019 (19.2% compared to 6.1%).  read more »

In September 2019, President Trump issued an executive order allowing local officials to decide whether their regions should continue accepting resettled refugees.  read more »

The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights have always been aspirational. When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, it was hardly self-evident that “all men were created equal.”  It took almost a century before the 14^th Amendment promised “equal protection under law,” and another century before could be seen as anything but a cruel hoax.  read more »

After two painful recessions and ever greater national discord, there is considerable support for a new beginning, even if it takes massive federal spending. The question we must ask now is what kind of spending makes sense given the character of the country, its geography, and its economic challenges. America remains a vast and diverse place, and decisions that make sense for one locale do not necessarily make any sense in others. A dispersed country needs dispersed decision-making, not edicts issued from on high by the D.C. nomenklatura.  read more »

The cracking sound of cricket bats is echoing amid the gently rolling hills and plains of Iowa.

With leagues springing up like soybeans, cricket is drawing players and fans in the Heartland, spurred by demographic change and a growing economy. Cricket’s growth in the Heartland reflects immigrants transplanting to American soil a homeland sports tradition – and enriching the culture we share.  read more »